


Reincarnation Redux

by sifshadowheart



Series: Reincarnation Self-Insert Fics [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon What Canon?, Child Abuse, Death, Except for Jon/Dany, F/M, Het, Het and Slash, Implied Spousal Abuse, Jon Snow is Not a Targaryen, M/M, Multi, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, R Plus L Does Not Equal J, Reincarnation, Self Insert, Self Insert is Daenerys Targaryen, Slash, Still trying to figure out the main pairing, That's a lock, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27072544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sifshadowheart/pseuds/sifshadowheart
Summary: She remembered dying.Or not dying exactly, but certainly the expectation of dying.It wasn’t a surprise.Whatwasa surprise was waking back up.A transmigration self-insert fanfiction.  SI is Daenerys Targaryen
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow/Self Insert, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Series: Reincarnation Self-Insert Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971403
Comments: 144
Kudos: 747
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts, Continue Reading Later





	1. Chapter 1

**Reincarnation Redux**

**A Transmigration Self-Insert Fanfiction**

**_By Sif Shadowheart_ **

_The measure of intelligence is the ability to change. ~ Albert Einstein_

**Chapter One: What the Fuck is this bullshit?**

She remembered dying.

Or not _dying_ exactly, but certainly the _expectation_ of dying.

It wasn’t a surprise.

With a disease ravaging the world that specifically attacked and/or affected the lungs, _dying_ became a more potentially immediate reality than it had been previously and for good reason.

It all started when she was fourteen and became ill. Bacterial bronchitis. Only, she was away from home and had to wait several days for treatment as a result until she could be taken to an emergency clinic that handled her kind of health insurance.

Her lungs were never the same and little did she know it but that was the beginning of the end, albeit an end that wouldn’t come for another eighteen years.

Eighteen years of fighting bronchitis and lung infections every winter or early spring.

Of not having the lung capacity she used to have and seeing a sharp decline in quality of life as a result.

Add in early-onset fibromyalgia that helped to weaken her immune system due to fucked up sleep issues from the (suspected, doctors still weren’t entirely sure) neurological issues and being in constant pain, and yeah.

Dying of a lung-related issue wasn’t exactly a surprise even if previously in her more fatalistic moments she thought it would be something like pneumonia that would take her and not a global pandemic.

What she did _not_ expect was, after what amounted to drowning in her own fluids at thirty-two years old, was instead of whatever made up the afterlife, she opened her eyes in a world both somehow familiar as well as altogether strange.

_…_

_House with the Red Door, The Free City of Braavos; 283 AC_

The first clue that it was looking like reincarnation was winning the eternal debate from the world of her first life regarding _what happens after we die_ came when she woke from what felt like the most confusing dream sequence _ever._

And considering that in her first life she was a writer who _thrived_ on the bullshit her mind could come up with when she slept, _that_ was really saying something.

(For example, she’d never forget the _vivid_ dream she had of being on a raft with her biological father and under attack by dinosaurs that was a result of having to ease out of taking her sleeping medication when she lost her health insurance along with her job.)

Now it had to be said that she was no stranger to what she often called a “sleep hangover” that resulted from sleeping _too much_ in contrast with the cranky-ass behavior that might occur if she didn’t sleep enough. This _wasn’t_ that. Instead, it was a wash of confusion and shit that _did not make sense._

She _wrote_ shit like this happening to characters, she’d never - well, there _was_ a daydream or two… - actually thought it could happen.

Honestly, if it weren’t for one thing in particular, she’d assume that she was having a fever dream or had slipped into a coma.

But that one thing was a reality.

Or perhaps it should be said that it was a _lack_ of a thing that convinced her more than anything.

She wasn’t in pain.

Rather: she wasn’t in _chronic_ pain as after she flipped the fuck out and tumbled down to the floor (that was too close, _why the fuck was it so close???)_ _then_ she was in pain from bumping her knees and overbalancing and slamming her forehead into the floor.

Chronic pain of certain kinds (cold that burned and nagged and ached in her joints, fire burning along her tendons and muscles, knuckles that cracked and froze and went stiff) had been her old friends for far too long for her to ever _not notice_ when she wasn’t in pain. Pain free days happened less and less every year. They were always a surprise. And she always noticed when they came and got a little more depressed when she woke up and they were gone again, likely for months.

Anyone who’d lived any length of time at all with a chronic condition of _any_ kind would tell you: the moment it receded _you noticed_ and dreaded when it would return.

The second clue were hands and feet that were chubby with baby fat.

The third was strong hands picking her up and turning her to face plain brown eyes and golden brown hair around a weathered, tanned face.

But the nail in the coffin of _maybe I’m just dreaming_ was the black fabric with a red three-headed dragon hanging on the wall behind the bearded man who picked her up and held her.

Seriously?

What _the fuck_ was _this_ bullshit?

That paralyzing thought - followed immediately by panic hoping that she didn’t have silver hair or purple eyes or a pesky imperviousness to heat and/or fire that branded someone as _Targaryen_ \- was what led to the child-like cry in far too high pitched of a little voice than anything else.

 _Especially_ when it occurred to her that she was _hearing_ what had to be Valyrian with as lilting as the man’s gruff voice was but was _understanding_ it just fine when all she’d known in - _fuck_ \- in her _first life_ was how to speak English (and that last bit was shaky at best sometimes.)

It bore to be repeated: _what the fuck was this bullshit?_

Where were the peaceful clouds or the endless plains or the mead-halls?

Hell, at this point she’d take a goddess weighing her heart against a feather, _at least then_ she’d be in an afterlife and not, not, having to go through the bullshit of _living_ all over again.

She’d always had an interesting perspective on death.

Working in health care and with the elderly for a time hadn’t changed that.

Where others struggled and clawed and shook their fists at death, she’d always thought that death was peace. Rest. A gift after life.

Dying, she’d long thought, was easy.

 _Living_ was hard.

And now she had to do it all over again.

Fuck.

Some people would think that living again, getting a second chance, whatever they wanted to call it was a gift.

A chance to do better, to experience different things than what came before.

She was half certain it was a curse.

Which, given how she’d depicted some gods and goddesses in her writing over the years, if it was she probably from their perspective had it coming.

But still: _fuck._

 _A Song of Ice and Fire_ or _Game of Thrones,_ it didn’t really matter. Neither was _exactly_ puppy dogs and fluffy when it came to fictional worlds.

Though there were plenty of puppies if there were direwolves running around, so you know, that was a win.

Living in the fantasy-meets-War of the Roses ‘verse would be a struggle from the first, even if she ignored the fact that the man holding her - _wasn’t_ a Targaryen himself, leaving her with a sinking feeling about just _when_ she might’ve ended up...and as who.

When she met their roommate in their large house where she shared her room with her caretaker - _Ser Willem, fuck, it’s Ser Willem_ \- she discovered she had been right and her new life came with a new crazy-assed sibling as well in one _Viserys Targaryen._

Or as Ser Willem always called him no matter what: _His Grace._

The more things changed, she supposed, the more they stayed the same.

Her name, of course, was one of those things that changed.

She wasn’t in the United States any longer, she was in Braavos. In exile in more than one way.

And her name now was Daenerys Stormborn, of House Targaryen, and literal _days_ after she - she could only call it _waking up_ though she suspected it was closer in line with her physical mind finally being able to cope with her...spirit’s? Memories - woke in her second life she discovered that she was only a year old.

Which, toddler, princess, exile, new world, she had to adapt even if she thought it was fucking weird.

Whatever.

She was a writer, or she had been, she could handle a little plot twist.

Still: annoying what with the constant threat of assassins and all.

 _Not_ as annoying to have to learn an entire new culture, writing system, and language in addition to _every-fucking-thing else_ that went with being spit out from the void into medieval-land, but not exactly a day at the spa either.

She _would_ adapt.

She _would_ survive and live and even _thrive_ in this second life.

When it came down to it, she was just too stubborn and spiteful to do anything _else_ whether that second life was a result of a blessing or a curse.

She’d been tired for a long time before she died. However she’d been granted a second life, she was never going to thank anyone for it, no matter how amazing or awful it ended up being. That said, if she ever _met_ the reason she was sucked into this ‘verse, there would be much shin-kicking to be done.

Then, not even a month by her reckoning after she came to awareness, three men arrived hiding their white scale armor under grey cloaks, and Daenerys-who-was-Sif realized that she might _know_ even less about her new circumstances than she thought.

She was in an alternate universe of some sort rather than strict canon.

Well... _fuck._

…

_First Moon of 300 AC; Winterfell, The North, Westeros_

The feast celebrating the first night of the King Robert Baratheon’s visit to the home of his oldest friend built towards a raucous cacophony as wine, ale, and beer alike were poured with free hands and were soaked up by massive haunches of roasted meat, fresh loaves of bread, and wheels of Winterfell’s best aged cheese.

Servants rushed hither and yon carrying everything from food to ale to wine.

The prudent serving girls dodged a grope or a pinch from the men at arms and the King alike, much to the disdain and pursed lips of the Queen, while the saucier ones leaned into the same which had fire lighting in the eyes of Lady Stark that promised dismissal to those who caught her eyes acting immodestly before their royal guests.

Minstrels that had arrived either with the royal party or who had been sent for by the Warden and Lady of the North for the entertainment of the Court who had made the journey North took turns playing everything from raucous dancing tunes as every woman was spun around the cleared floor or the type of rowdy fighting songs that had northern and southron men alike raising their tankards and bellowing along.

All in all, it was a feast and gathering the sort of which even the Great Hall of Winterfell hadn’t seen in a generation as the ruling Lord of House Stark was known far more for his dour, practical nature than hosting feasts despite all cajoling from his southron-born-and-raised lady wife.

Such things were _meant_ for disruptions.

Whether a well-aimed spoonful of mashed peas launched by a gleeful Arya Stark across the High Table to land on her giggling elder sister’s best frock to shouts of ire and her mother’s glare, or the ever-emptying goblet of wine before the Queen as the King pulled a buxom serving woman onto his lap across the room after sharing a dance with Lady Stark, events filled with alcohol, merriment, and conflicting personalities were _destined_ to go wrong.

Lady Stark, the consummate hostess, took the little troubles in stride and handled them with a sharp look where she could and a plan for _measures_ to be taken for the rest of the royal visit where she couldn’t.

The arrival of her goodbrother from his service at the Wall was greeted with cheers, her husband pulling him into a back-smacking hug before the King did the same at the sight of the Black Wolf as the First Ranger of the Night’s Watch was known.

Much as the Kingslayer, Ser Jaime Lannister, was known by kinder tongues and minds as the White Lion for the snowy nature of his Kingsguard cloak - despite how well and thoroughly in many opinions he’d dirtied it by breaking his oaths and stabbing the same King who’d lifted him up into that noble order in the back.

True disaster, on the other hand, had never once entered Lady Stark’s mind as an option.

Nonetheless, disaster was what struck as the latest northern reel played by the musicians died away and a new song began: the good cheer of the hall dying with it as silence covered the room.

It started at the closest tables and among those standing near the minstrels’ gallery but swept through the massive great hall like a summer blizzard over the rills to the west of the wolfswood.

The quiet was confused - at first - though dread and outrage alike followed it on swift wings.

Note by note it rang out, and everywhere it was heard smiles died and words stopped.

And for good reason.

Banners and loyalists weren’t the only remnants of the Targaryen dynasty that were stripped from the Seven Kingdoms once Robert Baratheon ascended the Iron Throne.

All memoria of the dragon lords were as well - including _songs._

Some were still played and sung, it was true, but never where a strict upholder of the Baratheon throne could hear them or an opportunist might turn in their neighbors for it no matter how innocently done on the part of the singer.

Even one as once-common as _Jenny’s Song,_ about the beloved-by-the-smallfolk, common-born wife of Prince Duncan, the Prince of Dragonflies, who gave up a crown for the woman he loved and the realm that paid the bride price in corpses.

_“High in the halls of the kings who are gone,_

_Jenny would dance with her ghosts:_

_The ones she lost and the ones she had found_

_And the ones who had loved her the most…”_

“Bring me that singer in the name of the King!” Robert Baratheon bellowed, his face ruddy and spittle spraying in his fury.

Still at the table, Queen Cersei’s pallor at the sound of the harp strings and the haunting voice - a woman’s that was as lovely and clear as the harp that accompanied her on the high notes and as hurt and throbbings as those lower - sang on.

Joined, now by the singing of steal and the screams and cries of surprise as the King, royal family, House Stark and all their guests, servants, and loyal guards, found themselves not free to charge the minstrel’s gallery and bring the King the foolish singer but surrounded by bare steel or facing down small crossbows previously concealed under cloaks and tunics one and all.

_“The ones who'd been gone for so very long_

_She couldn't remember their names_

_They spun her around on the damp old stones_

_Spun away all her sorrow and pain…”_

The first to go down were objectively the most lethal and dangerous: the Kingslayer and Barristan the Bold of the Kingsguard; the King; Lord Stark as well as his son, nephew, and hostage in Theon Greyjoy; the Lords of the North present for the feast along with their heirs and any guards of their own - and then realization broke over many faces: _some of them had been betrayed._

_“And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave_

_Never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave._

_They danced through the day_

_And into the night through the snow that swept through the hall._

_From winter to summer then winter again_

_'Til the walls did crumble and fall…”_

Hidden among servants, guards, and, of course, the minstrels were faces strange and not-so-strange. Faces who (once the shock had worn off and a survey could be taken) had one and all refrained from partaking of Guest Right though no notice of such had been gathered or reported when they arrived whether an hour or a month or more before. And through the fights, the clash of steel, and the cries for guards who never came, the harp played on and the woman sang.

Finally, once the rightful inhabitants of the hall and their _invited_ guests had been subdued and certain ones were lined up on their knees before the dais: the King with his wife and eldest son, the elder Stark brothers, and the Kingsguard; the singer herself appeared from the shadowed alcove that led to the minstrels gallery with the harpist two steps to her left and one pace before her.

_“And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave_

_Never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave_

_And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave_

_Never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave…”_

Both wore concealing cloaks to their rapt - no matter how infuriated, shamed, or otherwise distracted with their own thoughts - audience.

Yet still, a few assumptions could be drawn from the little that was apparent either from the figures themselves or the quality of the “entertainment” they were the clear orestratrators of:

The man was taller than most, with strong broad shoulders and large tanned hands with long fingers that most would assume belonged to a warrior rather than a musician. Nothing of his face or hair could be seen, not even his mouth so concealing were the shadows of his hood. Yet his nails were trimmed and his hands were clean - shockingly so for a _wandering minstrel._

Comparatively his companion was petite, though many with an eye for such things thought that even when _not_ surrounded by who had to be honorless sellswords to have _stooped_ to such a cowardly ambush, many of which _were_ large, strong men whose forms were made ever-larger and broader with the addition of armor and padding for protection in a fight or battle, the singer would still not be a tall woman of the likes of Lady Stark. All that could be seen of _her_ however made it clear that she was both young and possibly lovely as the skin of her mouth, chin, jaw, and neck that _could_ be seen unlike her companion was moon pale and luminous in the candlelight of the great hall. Her lips were lush and full, and perhaps most telling of all her teeth were straight, even, and white.

_“High in the halls of the kings who are gone,_

_Jenny would dance with her ghosts._

_The ones she had lost and the ones she had found…”_

Especially once the harpist quieted his strings with one hand, setting his instrument aside on the cleared high table, and pulled off his cloak to reveal a famous - or infamous - visage.

A startled breath was sucked in by every adult held hostage in the hall at the sight _he_ made:

Silver-chased white scale armor, twin swords sheathed upon his back, a white cloak unfurling with a twist of clever fingers as the singer caressed the words of the final verse of _Jenny’s Song_ acapella.

The younger generation were confused, with the Crown Prince spluttering and opening his mouth to shout before being cuffed by the man who held him at sword’s edge.

A Kingsguard turning traitor? Who was this man?

But their elders knew, while the smarter or cleverer of their youngers were quick to at least guess the knight’s name at the sight of vivid purple eyes that matched those of two of the guests present in the hall: Lady Ashara and her baseborn (but legitimized) son Asher Dayne.

 _The Sword of Morning._ The whisper whipped through the hall like a hurricane. _Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of Morning…_

_“And the ones…”_

The cloth of the Sword of Morning’s concealing outer cloak as well as that of the singer’s were fine: well made and darkest black rather than the more common brown, dun, or grey among travelers but not _uncommon_ on particularly talented musicians either for all that it was clear _now_ that _that_ was among the least important things to do with these fiends.

To the eyes of those willing to look, there wasn’t a difference to be seen between the armor and finery of the Sword of Morning - a knight who was said to be either dead or drinking, fighting, and whoring away his failure to the Targaryens in Essos - and that of the Baratheon Kingsguard, especially as Ser Arthur moved to stand before the pair of brothers he’d _served_ and _served with,_ a man who’d knighted him and the one _he’d knighted._

Ser Arthur’s silver chasing appeared understated but no less fine than the golden of his once-brothers. His spurs and armor were just as polished. His back straight and shoulders as strong as he stood before them, Ser Jaime in particular seeming as if he’d seen a living ghost. On his head his hair was the same starlight-silver that his friends often teased was prematurely grey that had marked him out among the Targaryen Kingsguard as similar but apart from the infamous Valyrian looks of those he served faithfully.

His white cloak was as unsullied and pure as Barristan’s own, and holding it closed was a sigil that none of those in the great hall had ever seen before but a few at least had heard of: a silver dragon rampant engraved onto an onyx cloak pin in the shape of a sword.

“ _Who had loved her the most.”_

Those who had thought the singer a petite woman regardless of comparing her against grown warriors were proven right as slim hands gloved in black leather parted her concealing cloak and revealed first black-leather boots on what must be dainty feet. The ones who could see the sides of her ankles or the back of her legs as they were shown by the moving fabric were the first to view the same silver dragon-rampant on straps at her ankles and pinning the back of her knee-high boots. Legs that seemed too long for a petite woman but that in black leather leggings were the shapely, strong limbs of a horsewoman.

Her black gloves led to - to much surprise, as it wasn’t the fashion or norm in the _slightest_ \- slim wrists and arms covered with blackened steel vambraces as the cloak fell back to her shoulders and showed her figure from collarbone to toes from the front.

A figure as shapely as her legs, with curves surprising on someone so slight of height even with her heeled boots in the Dornish style for a horsewoman.

Curves that were shown to advantage - even if that wasn’t the point of the armor piece of all - by the red leather belt and scale-mail corselet. The belt was decorated with engraved blackened steel medallions and at her hips held a pair of swords to further surprise, with a dagger tucked into it at her belly. Rather than Ser Arthur’s white-and-silver, her scale armor protecting her torso, shoulders, and arms was blackened steel chased with red enamel - a combination that struck fear into more than one heart and left the others either confused or enraged.

Cloak swept aside, the singer made quick work of the silver pin that matched Ser Arthur’s - and indeed, the rest of their party observant eyes made note of - and those who’d managed to regain their breath over the shock of Ser Arthur, or in panic at the ambush, or simple fear, lost it once again.

She was beautiful, even the most critical of eyes couldn’t deny it.

Glorious and ethereal, in a way that only those of _one_ origin truly could be: Old Valyria.

Thick curls of silver hair in a true moonlit blonde rather than the Dayne silver-steel surrounded a heart-shaped face with luminous porcelain skin. Her lush lips were the color of sweetest summer strawberries, and many speculated that she might blush just the same - or about the color of _other things_ on the beauty if they weren’t terrified out of their wits about what her appearance _meant_ merely than it itself. With arching brows, a finely carved nose and jaw, and high cheekbones, those swayed to fancies would name her the Maiden made flesh.

If, that was, they had never seen her clothed in armor with blood on her sword.

 _Then_ all anyone often thought of was their luck to be her ally or that she was a warrior shieldmaiden from a song or story not something meant to be _real._

At least, not outside of Dorne and even _there_ their warrior queens tended to have dusky skin and ebon hair.

It was the heavily-lashed lilac eyes that struck true _fear_ into those wise enough to feel it.

Before she opened those perfect lips to speak anyway, her speaking voice clear and lovely as a bell:

“I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen of the blood of Old Valyria and I have come to retake my birthright.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Reincarnation Redux**

**Chapter Two: Visenya, the Warrior Queen**

_“...for Visenya was both a dragonrider and a warrior, comfortable in both silk and in ringmail. When garbed as a warrior, she always wielded the Valyrian steel longsword Dark Sister…”_

_~ excerpt from Septon Barth’s_ _The Three Heads of the Dragon: on House Targaryen and the Conquering of Westeros_

...

Being reborn as a noblewoman, let alone royal, was the oddest and most terrifying experience Dany could've conceived of, especially as _this_ noble, royal woman during this particular intersection of history.

Above all else, the one fact that stuck out to her once she'd made sense of her new life being _real_ and not just a sleepy daydream while buried in warm blankets listening to the rain outside her window was how distinctly - and staggeringly - unprepared she was to live this life.

Had she been born into _literally any other social class_ \- down to and including slavery and no that wasn't an exaggeration - she would have been much more prepared to handle the day-to-day realities of her life. She was a country girl. Born into the lower/lower-middle class of the twentieth century of the common era in the United States of America. There were almost _no_ commonalities between the skills, knowledge, and expectations of _that woman_ who she had once been and those of a _fucking Princess of House Targaryen._

The skills she had were _suited_ to survival in this world - not royalty. Give her wood and a flint and she could start a fire, food and she could cook a meal, even an animal to butcher and a knife and she could manage well enough. Seed and soil - handled. Clothes to knit or mend - done. Even keep basic accounting records she could manage.

But - the sort of sewing expected of a noblewoman? Fine embroidery? Playing instruments? Dabbling with poetry? None of those were within her skillset, even as a writer.

She was what in this life would have been a merchant's daughter, a farmer's granddaughter, with both sides of her family from long lines of simple soldiers who answered the calls to war given by their liege lords.

Hardly the stuff of princessy legends, even with her knowledge however nebulous given the changes she'd already noted to canon of coming events.

That she also had never been one to hide her intelligence would've been problematic as well if it weren't for one fact: her eldest brother, the infamous Silver Prince Rhaegar, was noted as being highly intelligent, so she at least had that working for her.

She was out of her depth, to say the least.

But with the arrival of the three kingsguard members who had guarded the Tower of Joy - some eavesdropping as no one expected such a young child to have any understanding of their words let her know that Lyanna Stark had still died from childbirth but earlier than in canon and to a stillborn daughter which _definitely_ wasn't what she expected to overhear - at least she had more people to help her navigate her new world.

Even if they hadn't any idea of that being what they were actually doing.

Semantics.

_…_

_The House with the Red Door, Braavos; 290 AC_

Casting a glance at the lean figure hiding in the shadows behind him, Arthur Dayne gestured him forward as he exited one of the house doors that led to a balcony overlooking the central courtyard.

After he’d left Dorne with his sworn brothers, mourning at the loss of Rhaegar’s second daughter to stillbirth and second wife to childbed fever, he honestly hadn’t known if he’d ever see Prince Oberyn Martell again. The prince and his elder brother, the ruling Prince Doran, had both been rightfully furious at all the Kingsguard by the time they made it to Sunspear from the Tower of Joy. Rhaegar’s orders had meant that while their prince’s first wife and heirs were being brutally murdered, they were already in the Red Mountains and heading to Kingsgrave to await news and new orders after the deaths of Princesses Lyanna and Visenya.

If their orders _had_ been otherwise, perhaps they might have made it to King’s Landing ahead of the Lannister armies. Perhaps they might have saved the remaining members of Rhaegar’s family. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Those _what ifs_ still haunted him.

Haunted him along with a fleet of other sins of omission committed while a white cloak rested upon his shoulders.

But it was that one in _particular_ that he’d thought had well and truly sundered any chance of welcome or respite in his homeland in the future.

The prospect of losing the friendship of the Martell brothers hadn’t hurt nearly as dearly as that of losing their respect.

And yet: put in the same position, he still would not, _could not_ act differently.

Rhaegar was his prince, he should have been his king, far before he was his best and truest friend.

If Arthur couldn’t obey _his_ orders, then how could he call himself a knight, let alone a kingsguard?

At least he hadn’t been the _only_ one surprised to see the other.

Apparently there was a sharp - and significant - lack of information regarding the fate of the three Kingsguard who now watched over and protected Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen in exile. They’d taken steps to remain incognito whilst traveling to Braavos, yes. However, the fact remained that a secret could only truly be kept between two men if one of them was dead.

He’d have thought _something_ of their presence and not just that of Ser Willem Darry, the younger brother of his former and lamentably deceased sworn brother, along with the exiled King and Princess would have spread across the Narrow Sea.

And yet: Oberyn had been surprised in truth to see Arthur accompanying Will and not making a mummery of such for his own purposes.

That said, Arthur wasn’t _pleased_ by the purpose behind the meeting at the Sealord’s Palace. Dorne was still the last true ally of all the Seven Kingdoms to a Targaryen reclamation, with the rest of the loyal houses scattered and their prominence limited by Baratheon and Lannister alike. Oberyn _should_ have been pledging Dorne’s support without strings attached.

Should have.

Given what they’d lost in the Rebellion, and who, Arthur couldn’t find it in himself to truly resent the price that Doran had set on their ongoing friendship with House Targaryen even if it must needs remain secret and from the shadows for now.

There was just _one_ little - or not so little - problem with the price Will had promised Dorne.

Viserys Targaryen would no more live to retake his father’s throne than he would grow wings and start spewing _fire._

Somehow, knowing his countrymen, Arthur rather doubted that Doran would _ever_ stand to have his eldest child and _only daughter_ wed to the second coming of Aegon the Unworthy, or if Viserys ever started _learning_ the lessons that Will and Ser Gerold were so desperate to pound into his stubborn, lazy, entitled head maybe even a Maegor the Cruel.

No, Arthur was loyal to his best friend’s house but he wasn’t blind or else he’d never had obeyed Rhaegar in the first place.

Viserys Targaryen would have been trouble enough as a _spare_ prince sent off to embarrass himself in secret in the pillow houses of Lys and drink and whore his days away, let alone as the gods-damned King of Westeros.

At a mere thirteen namedays old, he was already doing enough of the former and starting to make noises about the latter that it was only a matter of time before Will had to start setting aside extra gold to cover the boy’s expenses with the taverns and pleasure houses in Braavos as it was.

Arthur had held his tongue all through the pact being struck between Will and Oberyn with the Sealord standing as witness to the alliance contract. Of them all who followed two children into exile, Darry was the most hardlined of them when it came to refusing to hear so much as a crosswise word about Viserys. Arthur had to wait until he could get Oberyn alone, lest the entire affair blow up like wildfire. His opportunity came as Oberyn pounced and pulled him aside after Will returned to their current domicile.

Oberyn may not know him as well as Rhaegar always had, but he knew him _enough_ to know when something was on his mind and had taken Arthur’s dawdling pace as the invitation it was meant to be, and Arthur had told him there was something he needed to see before he set out to complete his meandering tour of the Free Cities and thence to Dorne.

“What is it, Arthur?” Oberyn finally asked as he followed the finest swordsman alive through the large home that housed the last named heirs of House Targaryen. 

It was large and comfortable enough, but it was no castle or palace. It wasn’t even a holdfast. There was a certain irony that he almost enjoyed at the knowledge that the once-great house of the last dragonlords had been reduced to living like middling-wealthy merchants rather than the royalty they were.

Especially after what their elder brother’s idiocy and lust cost them all.

Arthur jerked his chin down at the courtyard below as he leaned one broad shoulder - damned First Men blood, it made the likes of the Daynes and Starks near giants compared to the average Dornishman - then asked:

“What do you see?”

Arching a brow but willing to play along - for the moment - Oberyn shifted to improve his view of the sight below but was still concealed from being observed by his subject, or subjects as he quickly saw, in turn.

Arthur watched the play of emotions as they crossed the prince’s face. Brows lifting in surprise, a soft smile of pleasure, then a swift frown and a flare of his nostrils, then shifting back to the playful expression that was often Oberyn’s version of a public mask. Arthur didn’t even have to _look_ at the scene to know what was going on, just based on the progression of emotions and having taken a two second glance below when they’d arrived.

It went something like this:

Every day that Viserys could be persuaded, weaponry instruction went on in the house’s central courtyard. Usually Arthur and Will would be involved, but given the meeting they’d had to attend, on this particular day it was being handled by Gerold and Oswell, with help from Will’s squire-turned-knight Ser Valen Massey. Which, given the personalities in question, was a recipe for disaster.

Or at least, moreso than usual.

Viserys, depending on his ever-shifting moods, when properly motivated wasn’t lacking in potential as a fighter.

What _was_ lacking was discipline or anything resembling tolerance for the regular and expected pains of weapons training no matter the weapon in question.

To make matters _that much worse_ , both of those were lacks that his younger _sister_ did not possess for all that she hadn’t the reach or strength of a male her same age, let alone five years her senior.

They didn’t allow the royals to spar.

Not with Viserys’s unstable temperament and tendency to pinch or pull sharply at his sister’s hair whenever he assumed the Kingsguard weren’t watching _and_ he was aggravated for one reason or another and desired to lash out and cause physical harm rather than restrict himself to tantrums.

Daenerys _wasn’t_ particularly talented with most weapons, it was true, but proficiency and practice could and would make up for that with diligence and steady tutelage.

The Princess, as it happened, had three of the best knights alive to teach her and not just a willingness but an actual _demand_ to learn to protect herself.

That day it seemed Daenerys was practicing with the simple wooden post and her dual short swords with Valen watching over her and Oswell acting as the actual guard midway between both royal children.

Which meant that stern, unyielding, experienced Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull himself was stuck-er- _training_ the crownless King.

It was the classic example of a howling wind and an unimpressed mountain standing steady and unmoving in the midst of it, complete with screaming and throwing of Viserys’s blunted tourney sword. All because the boy failed a block that had been corrected on him by _everyone_ who’d taken a turn at teaching him, and Ser Gerold in keeping with the agreement when Viserys agreed to begin his martial training, rang his head like a bell when his shield wasn’t in position to stop the sword coming at him.

Viserys stormed out, Ser Gerold sighed and shook his head at his back as Oswell followed the king, and across the courtyard Valen and Daenerys paid the show not a bit of mind as the knight made a slight correction to the crossover technique that she shifted to after finishing her previous exercise.

“Fucking Valyrian marriage traditions.” The Red Viper sneered. “Jaehaerys would have done better to marry Rhaella to Doran and hung the woods-witch’s predictions while Aerys whored himself into an early grave.”

Considering the heartache that Oberyn’s goodsister Mellario had visited upon his brother before decamping in a hissy fit and permanent separation for her home of Norvos, it would’ve saved more than the realm at large in the process, that was certain.

“You see the problem.”

“Problem?” Oberyn snorted, rolling his eyes as he studied the little princess closer. “That’s not a problem. At three years from his majority that’s a fucking nightmare sent from the seven hells. Arianne would eat that boy _alive_ if he doesn’t end up dead first.” He cocked his head to the side as his irritation at the situation washed away as quickly as it came as he watched the pair of blonds: one dirty-gold and the other purest silver-white; below. “And how did this come about? Hardly the sort of occupation I expected to find the last Targaryen princess at, especially under the aegis of a true lady like lovely Cerys Massey.”

Daughter of Lord Celtigar and widowed by her husband, a second son of House Massey and brother to the Heir of Stonedance, Lady Cerys the most trusted friend and confidant of the late Queen Rhaella. Valyrian in descent herself, she’d been both lady-in-waiting to the Queen and then due to an unexpected pregnancy had chosen to wetnurse the princess rather than allow the potential _vulnerability_ of a smallfolk wetnurse to accompany the royal children into exile. That her son had been part of the household as well, being Will Darry’s squire at the time, had merely given her another reason to go rather than risk Baratheon’s ire by remaining in her goodfather’s household.

As a part of the royal court from a very young age, Lady Cerys had been trained by the best Westeros had to offer in all the courtly graces and skills expected of the highest born ladies of the land.

Needless to say: swordplay wasn’t among them.

“The princess insisted.” Arthur grinned at the memory of a barely-beyond-toddling Daenerys picking up a practice sword she could just barely lift and copying the forms her brother’s trainer (Oswell, on that day) was trying to drill into her brother’s head. “No matter the argument otherwise or how we tried to explain it to her, when she was all of three namedays old, give or take a moon, she picked up a practice sword and hasn’t put it or any other weapon we’ve handed to her down since.”

“I imagine neither Lady Cerys or the _King,”_ and the sneer was back, if only for a moment. “Approved.”

“They did not.” Arthur admitted shamelessly. “But as the Kingsguard have taken up Viserys’s regency until he is of age, and two out of the three of us supported the idea and the other was won over in time, there was nothing they could do about it.”

“The White Bull changed his mind about something?” Oberyn lifted his brows in plain surprise, not even having to guess where the three men fell on that list. “Tell me you marked down the date, for posterity if nothing else.”

“She’s kept it up.” Arthur shrugged, folding his arms over his chest. “And applies herself just as diligently to lessons on statecraft and mathematics, or languages and womanly graces, as she does her unconventional training for a princess.”

“You don’t have to bait your hook further, Arthur.” Obery said dryly. “I understand the point,” and the unvoiced proposition, “you’re making. And yet the King lives.”

“And yet.” Arthur agreed blandly and without an ounce of intention. Neither of them would actually remove the boy-shaped obstacle. That said...boys die. Their world was a dangerous one, even without a usurping king out for Viserys’s blood and the boy’s own intemperance to take into account.

Viserys, uncrowned King of the Seven Kingdoms, could die of sickness, injury, or a genuine accident just as much if not moreso than he could of an assassin’s action.

It was a shallow, meanly (but pragmatically) thought hope.

It was also the only hope they _had_ of restoring a ruler who might prove _worthy_ of a crown back upon the Iron Throne.

“Keep me apprised of _both_ of their progresses.” Oberyn ordered as much as asked. “Dorne won’t support a second Mad King for the throne. And in the meantime let us all pray that Viserys Targaryen, second of his name, grows some of Rhaella’s sense to match against Aerys’s temper.”

 _Well, that._ Oberyn thought to himself but would never say within earshot of a Kingsguard, even one he liked. _Or that the gods removed Viserys from the Game entirely and allowed Daenerys Stormborn, the first of her name, to ascend as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms._

“I will, but first,” Arthur tilted his head back towards the hall. “Come with me. They’ll be done soon.”

“And?”

“And,” Arthur drawled, rolling his eyes at how ever Oberyn would be stubborn just for the sake of it if for no other reason unless the stars or the phase of the moon or his lady of the moment decided his whims otherwise. “My Princess would like to meet you.”

“Ah,” delighted interest lit up Oberyn’s infamous dark eyes, his brows rising as he smiled in a flash of white teeth against darkly tanned Salty Dornish skin. “In that case, lead on, old friend.”

…

To Oberyn’s pleasant - and despite what he’d witnessed in the courtyard - unexpected surprise, Arthur led him not to a young girl’s private suite suitable for a princess of House Targaryen but to the manse’s small armory whereupon they found the princess patiently cleaning the twin short swords she had practiced with. Little more than blunted wood with a core of iron to make them the correct weight, they were prone to splinters and chipping on the blade edges even when of the best make. Careful cleaning and sanding helped preserve them so that they might last the test of time until their user was skilled enough to switch to blunted steel tourney swords.

And, for those of a pragmatic or practical bent, allowed them to potentially be sold on if their owner became in dire need of funds once they were no longer needed.

For a moment Oberyn thought the princess had been left unattended in the armory but before true outrage could be seeded in him over such negligence, a shadow separated from the near wall and nodded at Arthur.

It was the young knight the princess had been training under who was, unless Oberyn was _very_ much mistaken, Will Darry’s squire - a once-stripling from House Massey.

He certainly wasn’t the same knobby-kneed and gangly thing that Oberyn remembered from the last time he’d seen him, he noted with carnal appreciation clear on his face, but given that the knight was now twenty namedays if he was a day, that was to be expected.

Except in rare instances, Valyrian blood tended to breed at least moderate good-looks in those blessed with it.

Sanity now...that was a different story.

The Massey knight took his leave without a word exchanged - to Oberyn’s faint dismay - following a look from Arthur.

The killjoy.

_“Twelve years before the Doom of Valyria.”_

To say that Prince Oberyn Martell was flat-out _shocked_ to hear the sounds of Old Rhoynish (a language that only survived in parts of Dorne and in rare pockets along the Rhoyne in Essos) coming from the lips of the scion of Old Valyria would be an understatement. Though after a glance at his old friend’s face he supposed that the surprise slightly misplaced. Arthur might be a Dayne, educated to speak several languages at Starfall including High Valyrian, Andahli (or the so-called _Common Tongue_ ,) and the Old Tongue of the First Men, but he’d been a page and squire in Sunspear for years serving in the court of Oberyn’s mother.

And if ever there was a language that was necessary at Sunspear’s court, it was Old Rhoynish as nothing stymied spies from outside Dorne so much as a language that was so rarely found beyond their borders, making it preferred for private conversations of any stripe meant to be kept secret.

_“Aenar Targaryen, Lord of his House, took his family, dragons, and all their holdings as well as allies and decamped from Valyria to Dragonstone. A far-flung outpost near a landmass that underwent constant squabbles and struggles for leadership and kings by the handful warring with each other. His fellow lords laughed at his actions and called him a fool for giving into the whimsy of his daughter’s nebulous gift of foresight.”_

_“And twelve years later, with the eruptions of the Fourteen Flames, House Targaryen began to thrive as the ruins of the Freehold devoured itself and left Aenar and his House as the last living dragonriders.”_ Oberyn finished the tale as the Princess paused to set her swords _just so_ into their rack, cleaning up her supplies and then turning to look at him fully.

Even having met more than a few people with Valyrian looks in his life, Oberyn was staggered by her resemblance to both her mother and her eldest brother.

It was in the eyes and lips: Rhaella’s eyes from the lighter lilac color than the deep purple of Rhaegar’s that was more Dayne than Targaryen from his Dayne ancestress, and the full, curved lips that when smiling had sent every woman in Westeros swooning on Rhaegar.

Oberyn imagined that when she was a woman flowered and grown - provided she lived that long - that Daenerys would put both Rhaella’s delicate, broken beauty and her brother’s infamous looks to shame.

 _“Daenys the Dreamer was proven right in her prophecy of Doom if House Targaryen remained, and ever since House Targaryen has been associated with prophecy. Both for good, as with the Lady Daenys, and for ill, as my brother’s obsession in hand with our sire’s madness led to my current state as an exile.”_ Daenerys studied Oberyn Martell carefully, spending a long moment as she decided on a course of action, though he spoke into the silence before she could form the words.

“You’ve been dutiful to more than your language lessons, I see, Princess.” Oberyn switched to Andahli, the language lilting and spiced from his mother-tongue of Old Rhoyish, much like the Princess’s would likely always taste of Valyrian. He arched a questioning brow. “Though I do not think you had the Sword of Morning bring me here for a debate on the causes of the Butcher’s war.”

 _“No, I did not.”_ Daenerys nodded her head slowly in agreement. _“I am going to tell you of two events - one that I could conceivably have learned through means other than that of my family’s infamous gifts and one that I could not - and then I am going to ask two things of you. When I am proven true - and I will be - that should be, if you are as devoted for obtaining justice for your sister and her children as I believe you to be, impetus enough to complete the two tasks I set you.”_

 _“You have my attention, Princess.”_ Oberyn blinked, not sure what to make of this fae little creature with her big lilac eyes she hadn’t yet grown into and speech that sounded more like a maester than an eight year old girl. Princess or not. _“Though I make no promises.”_

 _“No, I didn’t expect you would.”_ Daenerys gave a sweet, sheepish little half-smile. _“The events are these: you came here as the representative of your brother the Ruling Prince of Dorne, to pledge your allegiance to a Targaryen Restoration, but at the cost of my brother Viserys taking your niece Arianne as his wife and Queen.”_

 _“Which if you were clever and well-informed, and given what I have seen and heard for myself this past day there is no reason why you shouldn’t be, you could have puzzled out for yourself.”_ Oberyn agreed, that she had the knowledge was suspect but given her obvious intelligence, not out of the realm of possibly for her to reason out. _“And the other?”_

 _“Your paramour Ellaria Sand, is pregnant with your third child by her, and your seventh daughter.”_ Daenerys smiled at the cat-like slow blink Oberyn gave her at that, clearly not certain whether he should scoff or rejoice. _“The tasks if you believe in my words are two: first, by no means are you to joust at the tourney Lord Mace Tyrell will be holding at Highgarden in celebration of his heir’s sixteenth nameday and knighting.”_

_“Willas Tyrell hasn’t been knighted yet.”_

_“He will be.”_ Daenerys waved that off easily enough. _“The second task is similar: under no circumstances is Ser Jorah Mormont to attend the Highgarden tourney, even if it means bludgeoning him and keeping him prisoner for a time.”_

 _“Alright,”_ Oberyn nodded, making a decision on impulse. _“If you speak true and Ellaria gifts me another daughter - I’ll be generous and give you a year - then I will see your two tasks done.”_

“Thank you, Prince Oberyn.” Daenerys rose and nodded politely at the Red Viper, ever-aware that he was one of the most dangerous men on the planet if rubbed the wrong way. “I wish you swift winds and calm seas on the journey back to Sunspear.”

…

A year later, Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper of Dorne, was ensconced with his paramour, his newest daughter little Dorea snuggled in the cradle at their bedside in the Water Gardens when a raven reached him by way of Pentos.

Viserys Targaryen was dead of a sweating sickness that took Willem Darry and the servants of the household, though he died much quicker than anyone else.

Suddenly, he found himself glad that he had a sea between himself and the Kingsguard.

Having a known poisoner anywhere _near_ the death of Viserys, who while petulant was healthy enough physically at least, of a sickness that normally killed the elderly, sickened, or otherwise weakened souls...it would have looked _spectacularly_ bad given his conversation with Arthur Dayne.

“What is it, my love?” Ellaria Sand asked drowsily.

“Nothing, beloved.” He tossed the scantly worded but still encoded missive aside to destroy later. A gift of knowing and yet the little Princess didn’t move to prevent her brother’s death. He didn’t know whether to admire her ruthlessness or fear for the gaps in her abilities. Either way: at least it saved him and Doran having to _arrange_ things so that Arianne was spared an unworthy husband and the Iron Throne another unstable king. “Mixed news, is all. Nothing to worry about.”

…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ages in this chapter, physical (mental):
> 
> Beginning -   
> Viserys: 13  
> Daenerys: 8 (40)
> 
> End -   
> Viserys: 14  
> Daenerys: 9 (41)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update just in time for Samhain!

**Reincarnation Redux**

**Chapter Three: Plots and Plans**

If there was one fact that Daenerys had going for her, it was that with the arrival of the remaining Targaryen Kingsguard, Ser Willem Darry was no longer the guardian of herself and Viserys which opened up a _world_ of possibilities that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

Ser Gerold Hightower, Ser Arthur Dayne, and Ser Oswell Whent _all_ were knights of higher status both as Kingsguards _and_ as members of the nobility than a knight of House Darry, former Master-at-Arms of the Red Keep or not.

The only person in the makeshift household that _might_ have had the status to naysay the three Kingsguard was Lady Cerys, but being of Old Valyrian descent she had far less tolerance for the (in Dany’s opinion) _utter bullshit_ that went hand-in-hand with the average Andal-descended noble male. Though it wasn’t spoken of, from what Dany understood, it was one of those _known_ but unacknowledged truths that like the “savages” from Dorne or the “barbarians” from the North, the main families of Old Valyrian descent who had followed House Targaryen into first exile and then rulership of the Seven Kingdoms kept to different customs than those of the Andals. It must be said that they did so much _quieter_ than the flaunting of the Dornish and the near-segregation practiced by the Northerners, with the sole exception of the Targaryen propensity for inbreeding to keep the bloodlines “pure.”

Ser Gerold and Ser Oswell _were_ Andals, it was true, but they were also pragmatic.

They knew that a Targaryen Restoration wasn’t going to happen bloodlessly or that the rebellion - despite what Viserys liked to rant and Ser Willem allowed him to believe - was without cause or merely over their brother running off with Lyanna Stark.

It made for a good story, it was true, but the North didn’t rise in rebellion because Lyanna Stark ran away from a betrothal with Robert Baratheon into the arms of Rhaegar.

They rose up because the Mad King burned Lord Rickard Stark and his heir, plus dozens more nobles, alive.

Jon Arryn didn’t call his armies because Robert’s pride was wounded.

He called them because Aerys Targaryen demanded the heads of Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon - boys who had fostered in his household for many years and were the next thing to his own sons.

As a result of those sorts of truths, the Kingsguard were significantly more flexible regarding how Daenerys was educated, even if half the time it required Arthur and Oswell overruling their Lord Commander over some of the more _scandalous_ decisions until the White Bull came to see reason - if he ever did.

Ser Willem turned a blind eye to the fact that the rest of the household was training Daenerys to be a ruler just as much as they were Viserys, and was left wholly in the dark along with Lady Cerys and Viserys over some of the... _more questionable_ skills that Sers Arthur and Oswell chose to give her the option of learning.

They were determined, more than anything, that Daenerys _never_ met the same fate as her goodsister Elia or her niece Rhaenys.

Which was handy from Dany’s perspective.

Maybe in another universe she could’ve been a sweet princess from a song, but in this one all that would do was get her killed.

No, if she was going to survive this new world and the life she was given - she’d never say _gifted_ because with everything the original Daenerys Targaryen faced, such a life _wasn’t_ a gift - she needed far more arrows in her quiver than courtly graces and a pretty face.

Though both of those could be weapons in their own right if one knew how to use them, and Lady Cerys certainly did that and was determined to teach both her charge and daughter to do the same.

But that was just fine, as far as Daenerys was concerned.

She’d always liked the sound of Queen Visenya, a warrior and partner to Aegon the Conqueror, over other Targaryen queens and princesses who held monikers like _The Queen Who Never Was,_ or _Maegor with Tits._

Daenerys had always been curious and had a good memory, which held her in good stead as she couldn’t rely entirely on her memory of canon events with the changes this world had already shown.

Knowledge, as Baelish would debate with Cersei in one world, was power.

And power, at the moment, was something that House Targaryen sorely lacked.

_..._

_Third Moon, 291 AC; The Iron Bank of Braavos_

“Are you _certain_ you wish to chance this, your-Princess?” The Lord Commander of the _true_ Kings- _Que-Dragon_ guard asked anxiously though one would never know it as it didn’t show through decades of practice presenting a calm affect to the world. He had to correct his speech before he addressed his young Queen as _her grace,_ as well as chided his thoughts over a similar slip.

Daenerys Stormborn was as different from her recently dead-of-sickness brother as water and wine. One such difference that was stark indeed was her refusal of being addressed as the Queen she _was_ or by the honorific of her grace. They’d all been confused - except, perhaps, for Valen who was a confidant of the sort Viserys (the gods rest him) had never managed to be for the young princess - over the dictate. It was one of the royal commands she made as soon as Viserys’s death from the same sweating sickness that Ser Willem was still malingering under and had already taken the servants.

At least, they were confused until she explained, the words still ringing in Ser Gerold’s ears now several days hence.

_“A princess is born or married into the title, my Bull.”_ The princess’s voice had been firm with a steel that showed rarely but when it made an appearance managed to halt even her temperamental, high-strung brother in his tracks. It was the same she’d used as a wee child, barely more than a babe, over learning the sword - both to fight _and_ in defense of herself as a last resort. _“A Queen is nothing but a woman with airs above herself without a realm or people to rule. A princess I was born and a princess I will stay until the Seven Kingdoms are mine in truth and not merely in birthright.”_

Decades of habit and formal graces weren’t so easy to undo however, and all of the princess’s guards and companions who have thus far survived the sickness sweeping through Braavos - which was everyone in the household beside the servants, Viserys, and Ser Willem - would likely continue to trip on their tongues for some days yet to come, so ingrained was the instinct to refer to the Princess as the Queen they all had come to believe she had been born to be.

A blessing from the Seven, was Daenerys Stormborn, as far as Ser Gerold was concerned.

One that the realm had needed indeed after the gods saw fit to take Prince Rhaegar from them in the prime of his life, leaving them with only a Queen who’d survived far more miscarriages, stillbirths, and abuses than any woman should have been forced to bear and a young prince of... _uncertain_ temperament to survive him.

Ser Gerold had seen dozens of members of the Targaryen family in his lifetime, and while his young Queen often had shades of this one or that one in her face and actions, at heart she was both most and at the same time the _least_ like her eldest brother of all the Targaryens Ser Gerold had met and protected over the years.

Which wasn’t much of a surprise, given that she had been born into circumstances as different from the rest of her immediate forebears as a Princess of Old Valyria was from a Dothraki screamer.

Well...perhaps not as the last living Princess of the blood of Old Valyria was in many ways closer to the latter than a slave-owning haughty ladies of the former.

“The neutrality of the Iron Bank is sacrosanct - as long as one hasn’t defaulted on any agreements they’ve made with them.” His Queen answered patiently, having fielded many questions and arguments against her insistence on visiting the bank _personally_ rather than allowing Ser Gerold or one of the others to handle business with the powerful Braavosi institution on her behalf. “Either way: once we depart Braavos it won’t _matter_ if my appearance at the bank makes its way to the Butcher’s ear.”

Provided that Robert Baratheon didn’t know where the last Targaryen was located _already_ but given the lack of knives in the night coming for her head, she would have to act as if he wasn’t aware - or that his assassins hadn’t arrived yet - with the latter the more likely after so many years staying stationary no matter how much attention to detail had been paid by the household when it came to hiding the Targaryens.

Ser Gerold acquiesced to her decision, trusting that despite her young years his Queen had a plan. Even if she had yet to share it with himself or anyone else as far as he knew. She may be a child to most eyes, but Daenerys Targaryen had all of Prince Rhaegar’s intelligence and none of his flightiness being grounded by the vast differences between their circumstances that gave her a practical bent Ser Gerold had seen most often in the late Queen Rhaella, the gods rest her.

It gave him hope.

Once inside the Bank, they were ushered immediately into a long room with green marble pillars, tall windows, and a stone table with heavy carved stone chairs opposite the supplicant benches that were all that was present for their comfort while they waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Ser Gerold held onto his temper only through years of experience as well as the hint of a smile playing across his Queen’s face, little Daenerys clearly _amused_ by the obvious ploy to have them on the backfoot when dealing with the Bank’s representative.

By Ser Gerold’s measure they’d been waiting at least an hour by the time the door inset behind the stone table opened and a slim man of typical bronzed Braavosi looks with thinning black hair bustled in and set a large ledger down on before the middle seat of the table and introduced himself.

“Greetings.” The banker said. “I am Keyholder Aitor Gutxi, official representative of the Iron Bank and unless I have been misinformed, you are Ser Gerold Hightower,” dark, piercing eyes studied the silver-chased white scale-mail armor that was no longer hidden underneath Gerold’s concealing cloak. “The Lord Commander of the Targaryen Kingsguard. And this,” those same eyes turned their incisive gaze on Daenerys. “Must be your charge, the Princess Daenerys of House Targaryen.” He nodded after a long moment of study of Dany’s appearance. “What business can the Iron Bank of Braavos assist you with, Ser, Princess?”

Without further waiting or ado, Dany unclasped the simple necklace - deceptively so, being fashioned of a fine chain of Valyrian steel that would break her neck before it would snap away under a thief’s hands - and removed the round pendant that she had worn since she was six and Ser Willem entrusted it to her.

It was the first and only time in her memory where Ser Willem - whether by action or _inaction_ \- showed himself to be _aware_ of either the difficulties Viserys posed to House Targaryen as the Heir to the Throne or anything like a preference for Dany over the exiled king.

The token was a plain piece of iron, engraved on the front side with the three headed dragon of House Targaryen and on the back with the emblem of the Iron Bank of Braavos.

Stepping forward, she handed the token to the Keyholder, taking more enjoyment out of his shock than was probably appropriate for a Princess but he’d left her waiting for an hour so _meh_ , and then stepped back.

“I see.” Aitor inspected the token closely, pursing his lips tightly before leaning forward and setting it down beside his ledger and flipping to a certain page therein. “Unfortunately, Princess,” and yes, while Braavosi might not be _fond_ of slaveholders, the Targaryens hadn’t been such in four centuries, so the regret in his tone was genuine. “Due to the stipulations…” He trailed off, refreshing his memory on what exactly those _were_ as that particular account hadn’t been accessed in a decade. “Yes,” he tsked. “The account can only be accessed by the Head of House Targaryen or a chosen representative thereof,” he flicked a meaningful look at the iron token. “And as you are not _yet_ of age by either Braavosi or Westerosi law, the Bank cannot allow you access to the accounts of House Targaryen.”

Yeah, Dany gave an internal wince, she’d been afraid it was something like that.

“What about the manse?” She asked, polite as could be and none of her disappointment showing, as the Keyholder handed her back the token that represented the entirety of her house’s personal fortune. An incredibly important distinction from the accounts and treasury of the Iron Throne, and one that her family had kept intact ever since the ever-pragmatic Queen Visenya had insisted on it during the conquering of Westeros.

Dany had no idea about whether the Baratheons had chosen to do the same, and given Robert’s infamous spending habits nor did she really _care._

The drunken asshole.

“As it was purchased under the direction of the last authorized representative, your late mother the Queen Rhaella,” Aitor informed her. “Then transferred into the guardianship of the Kingsguard until one of her children were of age to claim it, it is Ser Gerold’s to do with as he wishes so long as he retains guardianship over yourself, Princess.”

“Thank you, Keyholder.” Dany nodded slightly. “Your honest assistance in these matters will be remembered in years to come.”

_“Valar morghulis,_ your Grace.”

“ _Valar dohaeris,_ Keyholder _.”_

…

“Well, m’lady.” Ser Gerold asked as they walked out of the Bank, having completed their business and taken their leave, the deed to the manse now carefully guarded in his tunic pocket under his breastplate. “What now?”

“Now,” Dany said, taking a look around and then hailing one of the small canal boats that ferried passengers around the Braavosi waterways. “I need to make another stop.”

“ _Destination?”_ The ferryman asked in cheerful Braavosi low Valyrian.

“ _The House of Black and White.”_ Dany told him gently, giving over an extra coin than the fare when the ferryman when pale under his tan at her words. “ _Thank you.”_

“M’lady?” Ser Gerold asked, tensing up tight as a bowstring at her words.

“Not to worry, ser.” Dany smiled up at her White Bull, attempting to reassure him even though she knew it might be a foolhardy thing to try. “Not for either of us, or even anyone you likely know.”

“Your dreams?” Ser Gerold wasn’t as given to putting stock in greenseers and dragondreams as some were, but he couldn’t deny that his Queen’s _insight_ to events at the very least was uncanny even if it wasn’t the result of actual foresight.

“Yes,” she told him honestly. “Trying to gain a bit of peace of mind regarding a few problems that will be difficult if not nearly impossible to counter any other way.”

“As you wish, m’lady.” He nodded. It wasn’t his place to gainsay his Queen after all.

But instead, to serve her will and protect her life, with his own if need be.

…

“A girl is not a girl.”

She didn’t know how long she’d been standing before the statue of Balerion, the Valyrian god of Death that Balerion the Black Dread had been named after before the Targaryens left the Freehold, when the priest finally spoke from behind her.

Dany had been to the House of Black and White before, in fact she’d made a point of visiting _all_ the many temples that Braavos was home to and learning at least the barebones of the various religions. It took her years, but they were years well spent in her opinion, since those excursions outside the manse’s walls often taught her things about this strange world she’d found herself in that she’d never considered before. Or simply hadn’t considered through a scope of having to _live_ in it.

She never went out alone, even if she _was_ good enough at slipping away to avoid most of her minders. She wasn’t a flipping idiot. But what Viserys, Ser Willem, Ser Gerold, and Lady Cerys didn’t know wouldn’t have her under constant close guard.

That Ser Gerold had been surprised at her _lack_ of emotion at the sight of the massive temple and the great carven ebony and weirwood doors, at least proved that while Arthur, Oswell, and Valen might not have _approved_ of her wandering habits, they had never narked on her to the Lord Commander either.

The skills she’d learned on the streets of Braavos might not be the kind that were “fitting” for a princess, but that didn’t make them any less valuable when that princess also happened to be an exile.

“That depends on how you look at it.” She shot a glance over her shoulder at the cloaked priest. “From one perspective: you’re right. From another: you’re wrong.”

“An exile is wise.”

“An exile can try.” She countered, then turned to face the priest of the Many-Faced God. “An exile has come to offer names to the Many-Faced God.”

The priest hummed, head cocking slightly to one side in interest but didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. The names would either be accepted or not.

Giving the gift of the Many-Faced God to others was the most sacred sacrament of their order and they rarely refused the names that were offered to them.

Often, those refusals hinged on the matter of the offering that the name-giver was willing to part with for the sacrament to be given.

A sacred gift is not something to be given cheaply after all, though much like the exile’s state, _cheap_ can also be a matter of perspective: what was a true sacrifice to part with for a beggar wasn’t even a notion of thought to a king.

Exasperated by the grandstanding, but not letting an ounce of it show on her face, Dany reached into her cloak and held what she’d concealed inside it out, the candles from the nearby statue gleaming off the soft gold and shining rubies of her mother’s crown.

“An exiled princess is wise indeed.” The priest of the Many-Faced God reached out and took the offering. “To understand the nature of sacrifice and sacrament. A man will listen to four names a queen uncrowned has to give.”

Daenerys Stormborn, last scion of House Targaryen - because she was confused about whether Arthur’s nephew being raised by his sister Ashara _was_ his nephew or her own despite rumors of Lyanna Stark’s child being stillborn - stepped forward without hesitation and gave them.

She’d put a _lot_ of thought into how/where/why she might have a reason to visit the House of Black and White. What she’d do if they accepted a name from her. What she’d do if they accepted more than one.

It was tempting to have them strike down the immediate dangers: Robert Baratheon, his brothers, his sons. Tywin Lannister. Gregor Clegane, Amory Lorch for revenge.

And so on, and so forth.

But what it came down to, in the end after many nights laying awake on her pillow and turning the different ideas over and over again, was a simple thought: the Faceless Men were _best_ used against the most _slippery_ and _dangerous_ of her enemies, potential or immediate.

The ones with the potential to cause the greatest amount of harm whilst _also_ being the most difficult to otherwise bring to justice.

And after many more nights of considering the idea from that perspective, she’d made a list, and it was the first four names off that list that she gave the priest now:

“Petyr Baelish, Euron Greyjoy, Ramsay Snow called the Bastard of Bolton, and Magister Illyrio Mopatis.”

The priest was _interested_ once more by this girl who was not a girl at all, though all he did was nod in mute agreement.

It was a varied list, and not one of the names were ones he would’ve expected from her.

He could see why He Of Many Faces had made it clear that the Stormborn, if she presented a sacrifice of _meaning,_ could have the names she gave so long as they were not on a list of those previously rejected by Him.

Dany nodded in turn, then spun and made her way from the temple to collect her stalwart White Bull, and carry on to the next task on her list: making a clean leave of Braavos, without a clear trail for Baratheon knives and little birds alike to follow hence.

…

“Do I even _want_ to know what sort of plan involves dead bodies, princess?” Ser Gerold asked after they had returned to the manse and he’d spied the corpses laid out in each of the still-living household members’ beds and dressed in their clothes.

He had no doubt that if he looked closer, they’d have a small piece of significance on them: a brooch, a ring, a necklace, a dagger, etc. that would identify them to even the most discerning spymaster as belonging to _them..._ so long as the faces and/or eye color didn’t give the game away.

“The sort that has the Butcher convinced that House Targaryen has _finally_ been stamped out and he can rest _easy_ on his throne knowing that the truest threat his reign _should_ know has been handled not by one of his cutpurses but by an act of the gods.” Dany said in a tone so sweetly mocking and vicious that if directed at a person standing before her they’d likely have actual _wounds_ from the cuts it made in them. “Dead of a plague and a house fire when there was no one left to tend the flames in the hearth and the candles.” She clucked her tongue in mock-dismay as Arthur and Valen, her main conspirators, unrolled a map of the Free Cities. “It should at least stall if not stymie anyone thinking to pursue us.”

“As well as cut out the hearts of the remaining loyalists in Westeros.” Ser Gerold cautioned her, scowling. “While it might only be a faint hope while you’re a child, princess, it is _still_ a hope that keeps those true to your family from losing faith entirely and cosying up to Baratheon.”

“I know.” Dany nodded, lips thinning in displeasure. “Which is why we’re splitting up. Valen,” she turned to her closest confidant and the best thing she had to an _actual_ big brother given Viserys’s instabilities. “You’ll go to your cousin in the Crownlands. He’ll have to be careful lest the Butcher’s Master of Whispers catches word, but have him inform those he is _certain_ of. Then you’ll need to go to House Darry, Richard Lonmouth, Miles Mooton, and Lord Dayne personally before meeting with Prince Oberyn in Sunspear.” She laid out the first leg of the plan. “Collect all the information you can, I need to know the political landscape in Westeros as best as possible now that a decade and another Rebellion has passed. Gossip, rumor, even whispers. I need it all.”

“Lonmouth would be a good one for that going forward.” Arthur offered, leaning forward with his hands braced on the table as they all surrounded the map, even little Lady Alys. “He always had a way with teasing secrets from people when he was your brother’s squire.”

Dany glanced at Oswell, Gerold, and Cerys and saw that they all nodded in agreement, before nodding in turn to Valen.

“If he can still be trusted, see if he’s willing to pass us information through Oberyn.” Dany decided. “The lords of the Narrow Sea are still too closely watched by Stannis Baratheon for us to risk them being caught passing messages to Essos and giving the game away.”

“How will the Prince know where to send us information?” Gerold asked the pertinent question.

“Because I’ll tell him myself when he meets my party in Pentos.” Dany pointed to the city-state nearest Westeros, just a short voyage across the Narrow Sea from King’s Landing. “Meanwhile, Ser Gerold will be escorting my ladies,” she nodded to Lady Cerys and Alysanne. “As well as our belongings to the rendezvous point outside Qohor.” She pointed in turn to the forests to the East of the city-state known for its craftsmanship.

“You mean to disappear into the wilds.” Ser Gerold’s eyebrows rose high on his forehead, unsure of whether he approved of her caution or disapproved of her paranoia. Though given that she’d been raised from the cradle with a fear of assassination, both were understandable.

“I do.” Dany nodded firmly, even if _disappearing_ wasn’t the _exact_ reason for her decision. More a question of _baby dragons_ _and where to raise them._

The first - original? Canon? - Daenerys had hatched dragons on the border of the Red Waste and word of them spread all across the known world within _months._

And when one is trying to convince an asshole after one’s head that one is _dead_ , that level of information leak was just far too risky a thing to court.

The last thing Dany intended to do was given anyone - Baratheon, Lannister, Arryn, Tully, or even Stark - a chance to create plans to counter her.

After all, if there was one thing she firmly believed, it was that the threat that was unseen was the one that was deadliest of them all.

Making the assumption given that the Princess hadn’t given them orders otherwise that he and Arthur were to accompany the Princess to Pentos, Oswell spoke up in his gruff voice, asking why they needed to venture there.

Dany traded a look with Arthur and Valen, the only ones she’d trusted so far with her “dreams” that she was using to disguise her seemingly otherworldly knowledge of events, and then said cryptically:

“There’s a Magister there that I have reason to believe has stolen artifacts of House Targaryen. Ones that might be... _problematic_ if they were to be placed in the hands of a pretender. I mean to liberate them before such a day arrives.”

“As you will, Princess.” Oswell shrugged, not bothered either way though still pleased to have an answer.

Little Daenerys could be twice as secretive as her eldest brother, but at least when she spoke her words were more likely to be grounded in facts and information than in dreams and prophecy.

No, the Princess took after her mother the queen, thank all the gods, moreso than her male kinfolk.

After the horrors those kinfolk had brought upon the realms - and what Viserys more than likely would’ve been capable of had he ever gained even a measure of his predecessors’ power - Westeros would be all the better for it once the Princess took her throne.

Because for all that she refused the title of Queen, little Daenerys had never for a moment tried to deny her blood or birthright.

All of Viserys’s fire with none of his idiocy.

The gods had blessed the newly-renamed-Dragonguard (until she was a Queen in truth and they were the Queensguard for only the second time in history) in Princess Daenerys, indeed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all my darlings who need a breather from an anxiety-inducing, ruckus-filled day in the States.
> 
> Stay safe darlings!

**Reincarnation Redux**

**Chapter Four: Every Empire Falls**

_Fourth Moon, 291 AC; Pentos_

“Took you long enough, little queen.” Oberyn jibed irreverently as he melted out of the shadows outside of the small inn where they’d arranged to meet via encoded raven messages.

“I’m _so sorry_ that faking my death and then finding discreet passage out of Braavos took longer than you assumed, Prince Oberyn.” Dany countered complete with a sarcastic eye roll as her two shadows scowled darkly at the prince. “And it’s _princess_ until I claim the throne, thank you.”

“As you wish, princess.” Oberyn nodded, smiling slightly, already enjoying being around the little girl who was filled with full-grown sass. Not unlike his own darling daughters. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the fat magister since I arrived a fortnight ago.” He slipped into his report easily despite the girl’s young years.

After running into her abilities for himself courtesy of his youngest daughter’s birth, he wasn’t about to doubt her _now_ when he already carried out and completed the tasks she’d previously set him.

He _still_ didn’t know what was so important about a tourney and a northern knight - rare as the latter was - but it wasn’t for him to question.

_She_ did, and like with her asking him to come to Pentos and keep watch on an oily magister, that was all he needed to know when he could see the same fire in Daenerys Stormborn that burned in his own breast for vengeance against those who had wrong them and their kin.

The rest of Westeros liked to forget, but the blood of Old Valyria flowed in more than just the Targaryen and Baratheon lines or in the Crownlands.

Granted, while it was thin at best in some cases, in a handful of others it wasn’t nearly so watered down, and _Dorne_ was where the strongest strains outside the three vassal houses who had followed the Targaryens from Old Valyria could be found.

“Has he left yet?”

It was a movement that was hard to predict the same as the Faceless Men were difficult - to say the least - to anticipate once they’d been engaged.

The death of the Master of Coin for Robert Baratheon was _exactly_ the sort of move in the great game that would draw Varys and Illyrio together, the question then became whom would travel to _whom,_ with only the urgent need to listen to his little birds likely keeping the Master of Whispers in King’s Landing.

Whether the assassins would likewise take advantage of the magister’s presence - however covert - in Westeros to claim his name as well was also in question.

It gave her a small window that was impossible to predict the beginning of to slip into the magister’s manse before all of Pentos was sent into an uproar at his death and _liberate_ a few things that - coin paid or not - didn’t actually _belong_ to a man whose aims, goals, and origins were suspect at _best._

“Yesterday,” Oberyn said, leaning against the inn’s outer wall on one bent arm, his legs crossed at his ankles. “His _servants,”_ Pentos didn’t _officially_ condone slavery given that they’d lost the last war with Braavos, but in reality the city remained the same slave-bound culture it had always been. “Breathed a collective sigh of relief, most leaving to spend time with whatever family or friends they might possess outside of the manse.”

“And the guards?” Arthur pressed, frowning.

He disapproved of this entire venture from start to finish as foolhardy, but knew as well as anyone that once a Targaryen’s mind was set, there was little - if anything - that could truly change it.

“Unsullied.” Oberyn shrugged then nodded in agreement with the scowls that news was met with by the two knights. “Impressive on the battlefield, it is true,” he moved to explain. “But these ones are like many who are separated from large groups of their kind and Slavers Bay to play guards for rich men: growing lazy and indolent with the ease of their lives versus that of their training. Still formidable but hardly the same quality as a freshly blooded recruit from Astapor.”

“Excellent.” Dany smiled, even as she mourned Mopatis’s slaves - Unsullied and otherwise - who had chosen to remain behind at the manse. “Go.” She ordered the trio of deadly killers. “Silence the guards, keep the alarm from being raised in whatever way necessary, but _try_ to keep from taking unnecessary life.” She down and away from the men watching her with rapt attention she still wasn’t used to despite it being years now since the first time she was treated as more than a little girl to be entertained. “Their punishments for failing to stop us will likely be severe enough without us adding to it.”

“And you, princess?” Oberyn asked, frowning with concern despite the calm demeanors of her actual guardians.

“Arthur will escort me to the stables where I will wait for you to clear the manse.” She informed him of the plan they’d made over the course of the sea voyage from Braavos. “I’ll be safe enough there.”

Every empire falls. It was time Illyrio Mopatis learned that before the Faceless Men taught him the price of trying to manipulate Dany from the shadows. And when it came to her personal agency and freedom, Dany took no prisoners.

“As you will, Princess.” Oberyn reached behind himself and took his daggers from their hidden sheaths at the small of his back, flipping them flashily in the limited light of the stars.

The princess had chosen her timing well, late or not.

It was a new moon, with only the dim lights of lanterns and candles shining in windows and the far-off stars to relieve the dark and give away their attack or shine on the blood spilled.

And it _did_ spill for all that they took care to limit the deaths at their hands.

Their Princess, their future Queen, had given them their orders. She had decided that whatever this magister had hidden in his manse, it was worth the lives it cost to liberate, whether at their hands or that of the magister when he returned to find his home ransacked. Not as _many_ as there would have been if she hadn’t instructed them to take care.

But it wasn’t bloodless or a lifeless invasion by any stretch of the imagination.

Oberyn’s respect for the little queen rose when Arthur returned with her after the manse was secured and instead of immediately setting to searching for whatever it was she was certain Mopatis had that she wanted, she insisted on seeing the bodies of the dead.

A dozen of the Unsullied, almost all that were left to guard the manse in Mopatis’s absence, and a houseslave who had tried to gore Whent with a kitchen knife was the count in the end.

The little queen closed each of their eyes or pressed her hand to each brow, and murmured words in an odd language even _Oberyn_ didn’t recognize over them.

Some remnant of Valyria that the Targaryens didn’t share with outsiders perhaps, even those that shared their blood but not their name.

“It was a good death, Princess.” Oberyn attempted to comfort her. “Quick and clean, better than most a slave might endure.”

“I know.” Dany admitted, looking up at him with clear eyes as she lowered the concealing hood on her cloak now that there was no risk of her being seen by anyone who could later identify her. “But they’re still the first deaths I’ve ordered for no reason but my own gain. I never want to become the sort of highborn that forgets the weight and cost of life, even if I can’t let it stop me from continuing on the path I’ve chosen.”

“You, little queen,” Oberyn bent down and pressed a lightning-quick kiss to her forehead before either of her shadows could stop him. “Are already a better ruler than the last two combined. When you call, it will be Dorne’s honor to answer, your grace.”

“I’m not a queen, Oberyn.” Dany retorted in exasperation.

“Not _yet,_ your grace.” Oberyn countered just as quickly as they started searching the manse for Mopatis’s study, treasury, and any hidden vaults or rooms. “But if the gods are good, you will be in time.”

And Oberyn intended to make _certain_ that that time came, the gods' plans bedamned, no matter what lip service he gave to the piety expected of a Dornishman.

…

“Well,” Oswell said with his typical dark sarcasm as they all stared at the forged door inset into Mopatis’s study wall. Made of iron-banded hardwood and locked with a lever system that kept the iron bar in place until the correct key was inserted and turned, it was impregnable barring a dozen men with a battering ram - or a fire-breathing dragon - to tear down the door. “We found it.”

It hadn’t even been that hard to find after they’d raided the rest of the manse for small valuables like the Magister’s cache of jewelry and immediate coin kept in his dressing chamber and provisions from the food storage.

Hidden - and barely that - behind a large tapestry of Old Valyria, finding the hidden cache that their Queen had been certain Mopatis owned as the _easy_ part.

Dany stared at the door for a long moment, ideas churning in her mind, then she blinked at a sudden thought and turned to the massive desk that took up the majority of the room where Oberyn was hard at work searching through Mopatis’s documents for anything that might be of note.

Or as Dany had put it when she’d set the cunning viper to the task: of potential leverage against _whomever_ it might one day be needed.

Mopatis was reputed to have his fingers in many myriad pies after all, and Dany might have put a timer on his life, but she still wanted to know for herself just how far reaching and encompassing his machinations had become before one of them bit her in the ass years from now despite Mopatis by that time being long dead.

“What are you thinking, princess?” Arthur asked as she moved from staring intently at the barred and locked door to what was most likely a vault of some kind to studying the desk, even crawling under it and pulling out drawers, crouching and visibly comparing dimensions using her hands as a guide.

“I’m thinking,” she explained, even as she grinned in triumph as the right-middle drawer showed itself one-knuckle shy on the interior dimensions versus the exterior, more than double the discrepancy of the others to account for the slides and separators. “That anyone who is as fat as the Magister isn’t going to make accessing his vault overly complicated when he likely accesses it often.” She studied the ornate carving of dragons and ships and swords intently, feeling and pressing lightly along the upper half of the desk as there was no _way_ a man of the magister’s bulk would be able to access a trigger lower down. “Making life difficult for thieves with multiple steps to overcome also makes life difficult for the _owner_ and most people don’t have the patience for more than a couple of steps in their regular lives.”

Oberyn arched a brow at Arthur, pausing his skimming of the magister’s records to briefly _judge_ what sort of education - exactly - the little queen was getting.

“Don’t look at me.” Arthur muttered quietly, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m just glad she isn’t trying to pick the lock _first_ rather than looking for the key.”

The Red Viper blinked at the inference that the princess was _capable_ of picking a lock in the first place - which really just meant he had even more _questions -_ before turning back to his own task as the princess pressed down on a reversed-Targaryen sigil on the upper-left corner of the desk, easily within arms reach for anyone sitting behind it, and the shallow hidden drawer she’d located released with a soft click.

That it was the Blackfyre sigil - the three heads facing the right instead of the left - wasn’t lost on her or Oswell who’d been helping her examine the desk.

With quick hands Dany slid the top of the hidden drawer back, smirking at the sight of a key and a bundle of parchment bound together with a - eww - thin braid of silver hair tied with a black ribbon.

Handing the bundle off to Oberyn who paused with his current task to go through the promising find, she removed the key to what she _hoped_ was the vault before closing the hidden drawer. Taking a steadying breath, she placed the key in the lock and then slowly turned it, exhaling in a rush and smiling widely as the key turned and the sound of tumblers _clack-clacking_ into place resounded through the opulent study. Reversing the lever and removing the internal bar took more strength than she’d like to admit, but she appreciated that the others let her at least try rather than assuming she needed their assistance from the start.

Most of the world disrespected or flat-out disregarded women and she managed to land herself in the care of several who were more aware than most of just how delicate women _weren’t._

Ser Willem had been typical of the times, and Ser Gerold certainly had his moments, but otherwise Dany found herself blessing in her guardians’ ideas of what a woman could accomplish.

Part of that was probably the fact that for the most part her guardians were Dornish or Valyrian, both of which were significantly more wary of what a woman could do than the Andals and their misogynistic Faith, but then there was Oswell who was as Andal as it came and _he_ tended to give zero fucks about anything other than fulfilling his vow to her brother Rhaegar in looking after his family.

When it came to the actual _door_ however, she needed some extra help and Arthur and Oswell were right at her side to muscle the heavy door open and stopper it with a weighty statue of a dragon - she thought it might’ve been based on Balerion - once it was opened wide and refused to stay.

“Oh, that _motherfucker!”_

…

None of the three men in the overblown study of Magister Mopatis recognized the language their princess swore in, but every single one of them knew that _tone_ and would have been willing to bet if they understood it that it was filthy indeed.

Not that they could blame her as the light of the lanterns set the cache behind the vault door glittering and gleaming, rainbows of light bouncing off the shadows of the night and threatening to dazzle the eyes.

“Is it not what you expected to find, little Queen?” Oberyn asked, as he had to forcibly tear his eyes away from the sight and turn back to his task.

They didn’t have days to be at their pillaging, and even with the plans they’d made for their exits from Pentos, space - considering the contents of the vault - was quite limited.

“Not exactly.” Dany unclenched her jaw as she took the lantern Oswell handed her without needing to be asked and stepped forward into the room she estimated at about six-by-six as Oswell could likely just about lay flat against each wall without scrunching.

“What was it you saw, that led us here, Princess?” Arthur prompted, hoping that they’d finally get an answer despite her being silent on the subject thus far since she revealed her plan to travel to the magister’s estate.

Moving forward, she silently tapped her fingers on three of the dragon eggs that were resting in miniature nest-boxes, each lined with a matching silken-velvet to cushion it and angled so that the moment the vault opened all eyes were drawn to the display.

A display that wasn’t _quite_ filled, but that certainly held more than a trio of fossilized eggs said to have been turned to stone by the ages that the “original” Daenerys once received as a wedding gift to a khal.

Which, thinking back on it, made a sickening kind of sense.

Given Mopatis’s suspected origins and the “Pisswater Prince” plot from the books that didn’t make the television show, it stood to reason that any man like Mopatis was portrayed wouldn’t put all his eggs - dragon or otherwise - in one basket.

“These three,” she said of the eggs that once-upon-a-time (once-upon-another-world maybe?) became Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion. “Being presented by Mopatis to me as a wedding present.”

“Wedding?” Arthur scowled at the very _notion_ of his best friend’s tiny sister _marrying._ “When? To whom?”

“Oh, just a couple years from now if Viserys had lived.” Dany pursed her lips in mute disgust as even the highly-disciplined and trained Dragonguard couldn’t help but growl in wordless threat at such a thing, Oberyn not bothering with restraint and cursing the air blue in several languages. “And a Dothraki Khal that Viserys would have _sold_ me to for an army that he never commanded and a throne that he never sat upon.”

“What of the other four?” Arthur asked of the blue, purple, dark grey, and red eggs. They were a range of sizes, though none so large as the black or as small as the cream, and had a softer quality that spoke to them being _eggs_ rather than fossils.

“No idea.” She shrugged truthfully. “My knowledge is of what _might_ be, not necessarily what _is._ That, however,” she pointed to the sword that would draw every eye if it weren’t for the lure of the eggs and had clearly captured Oswell’s attention. “I thought I might find here, given my suspicions of Mopatis’s origins.”

“And what would those be?” Oberyn asked when the others didn’t, not looking up from a rather _edifying_ communique from the Golden Company’s current commander.

“Blackfyre.” She said, both of the sword with its infamous dragon hilt and chicken-egg-sized ruby set in the pommel, and Mopatis’s origins alike. Then she nodded to the banner of the reversed-Targaryen sigil with its likewise reversed colors of a black sigil on a red background. The combination of which was first used by Aegor “Bittersteel” Rivers, who founded the Golden Company and was one of the plethora of Aegon the Unworthy’s legitimized bastard sons.

Bittersteel’s brother Daemon Blackfyre who was gifted the sword from which he took his name before rising up against their half-brother the legitimate Daeron II, called the Good, simply used the reversed color scheme rather than separating further by reversing the sigil as well.

“They were ended.” Arthur’s tone wasn’t disbelieving so much as cautious, to which Dany nodded then countered:

“In the _male_ line.” Her smile was bitter as the men exchanged understanding glances. “Women often have more power than most understand, especially when left alone to guide and shape their children, or if they’re skilled in using their strengths as both sword and shield to achieve their ends.”

Popping open a few of the chests inside the vault, she found the expected cache of gold, silver, and precious gems.

Enough to fuel a rebellion, if she had to guess, then nodded firmly.

“We’ll take two of the merchant carts near the stables and enough horses to pull them.” She decided, rather than stick to the original plan of only taking as much as they could carry and traveling by ship.

Overland to Qohor would take significantly longer than by ship to Lorath and then overland from there, but it was worth it to rob an enemy - because make no mistake, at this point she was _certain_ Mopatis was an actual enemy rather than simply an opportunistic merchant - rather than leave such a bounty in his hands.

No matter how miniscule the number of his remaining days before the Faceless Men caught up to him.

“We take it _all,”_ she said, a command no matter how young her voice or sweet its tone. “Eggs, sword, riches, documents, provisions, everything we can fit in two carts without unduly burdening the horses.”

“Only two?” Oberyn made an offer without _actually_ making the offer.

“Only two.” Dany turned and met his dark eyes, the pair eyeing each other like a couple of wary predators having to suddenly reappraise their opponent. “Valen is set to meet you in Sunspear, he won’t have time to wait for you to travel to Qohor and then back to Dorne, and an absence of that length will likely be noted by Varys and his little birds.”

“Shame,” Oberyn smirked. “I would have liked to see the expression on the old bull’s face when you arrive with carts of riches, dragon eggs, and _Blackfyre._ ”

To be true, his only regret was that Ser Willem wouldn’t witness the same after being relentless in his promotion of Viserys’s status over that of Daenerys.

Dany giggled as Arthur and Oswell laughed after picturing the Lord Commander’s reaction, Oberyn himself content to keep on grinning, having provided a much-needed moment’s levity as they got down to the business of stripping away at least _part_ of the magister’s ability to fund or fuel a rebellion on Oberyn’s side of the Narrow Sea.

One would think a Pentosi merchant prince would know _better_ than that, no matter his heritage.

The Iron Throne has in the past centuries since it was formed of the swords of Aegon’s fallen enemies in the breath of Balerion, tossed back no less than _six_ individual rebellions and incursions against them from Essos, several more from their own Great Lords, and a single civil war against the trueborn of House Targaryen.

If there was a business venture destined to failure, it was foreign invaders attempting to put a leash on the Westerosi now that Aegon the Conqueror had completed the hard work of marrying them into a united people.

Hate or disdain each other they might, war and feud against each other, but attempt to rise above them and _all_ of them will come together to dash you down.

Certainly there would still be an outlier or two seeking advantage by allying with a foreigner, but those would be the few not the bulk of the nobility and _definitely_ not the great houses - and anyone planning to take Westeros _needed_ at least a couple of the great houses on their side unless they wanted to face an unrelenting storm of revolts until they either died, were killed, or tossed back across the Narrow Sea in ignominy.

“Why do I have the feeling that two carts of riches and dragon eggs are only the beginning of your plans, little queen?” Oberyn asked, digging back into the parchments, then adding in an aside: “much of this will need to come back with me to Sunspear, as I haven’t the time to decode and investigate the information properly before we must away.”

“Do what you must to learn all of Mopatis’s secrets, Prince Oberyn,” Dany nodded with a smile, her eyes flashing and dancing with her triumph in the flames of the lanterns as she settled first one egg then the next in the chests Oswell and Arthur were lining up in the study to move out into the stableyard. “Because you _are_ correct: this is only the beginning.”

Seven dragon eggs, enough gold and riches to field several armies, and a legendary sword.

Altogether she couldn’t help but think that outsider, reborn, exilic princess or otherwise, it made for one _hell_ of a beginning at that.

…

_Tenth Moon, 291 AC; outskirts of the Free City of Qohor, Essos_

_Saying_ that it would take them significantly longer to travel overland by wagon was one thing: having to actually _do it_ was another, as Dany discovered half a year after she departed Pentos with two Dragonguards in tow and enough wealth to buy the Crownlands from smallfolk to armada, Baratheon transplants to Lords of the Narrow Sea.

It was a seemingly endless journey filled with dust, horseshit (literal and metaphorical), training, hot days, cold nights, hair dye, and more than one death along the way.

Funnily enough, it was the hair dye that turned her normally stalwart and true Ser Arthur into a _massive_ baby, as Dany wasn’t the only one with an infamous identifier.

Steel-silver or white-silver, both of them were hard if not impossible to pass off as anyone but who they were.

But, thanks to Mopatis and Dany’s knowledge of the various plots involving this world no matter how different the version she was actually living in was in the end, she had an easy answer for that.

An easy answer that turned the infamous Ser Arthur Dayne into a massive, whiny, baby and entertained Oswell with _weeks_ of mocking as a result.

Granted, given what it was made of, the blue Tyroshi dye _stank_ to high heaven.

However, like Dany’s nephew-who-wasn’t, with their hair turned blue their eyes also appeared to change color in contract, Dany’s turning more blue and Arthur’s almost black, making the disguise two-fold.

With a start in hand, there was no reason to stop, Dany further co-opting the hiding maneuvers of Griff/Young Griff by pretending Arthur was a sellsword recently widowed, Dany his now-motherless daughter, and Oswell his good-brother, the family of three relocating from the more dangerous and constantly-warring “Three Daughters” to the relative safety of Qohor.

Between Dany’s sweet smiles and the martial abilities of her knights, it was a ruse easily believed by the merchant caravans they joined on the great merchant road between the coastal free cities and that of first Norvos and then Qohor.

It also saved them from bandits more than once as raggedy cutthroats were no challenge at all to the likes of the Sword of Morning and the Black Bat of Harrenhal, adding half-a-dozen horses to change between the carts as a result.

Perhaps if the first bandit attack that her knights had seen her rather... _opportunistic_ tendencies come into play, Arthur and Oswell might have been surprised, shocked, or dismayed over Dany showing no remorse or reluctance to raid the bandit’s belongings for gold, weapons, or supplies as well as keeping their horses, but given the ransacking of Mopatis’s manse, well.

Pillaging dead bandits for goods was hardly of note in comparison.

Dany meant to not only _survive_ but to _thrive._

And over her dead fucking _body_ would she ever earn the ignoble moniker of _Beggar Queen._

“Princess, praise the _gods.”_ Lady Cerys rushed right passed Ser Gerold, beating out even her own daughter as she darted forward to snatch up Dany into her arms, hugging her tightly and pressing her cheek to Dany’s smooth forehead. “Were it not for the messenger Prince Oberyn sent ahead, we would have feared the worse!”

“We found more than I anticipated in Pentos.” Daenerys admitted, dancing around the truth of things, as even in a camp outside of the city it paid to be cautious when it came to ransacking a magister’s manse, no matter how far away. “We had to take the long road as a result.”

Ser Gerold caught up to them, running callused hands down unmarred cheeks and merely arching a brow at bright blue hair before turning his stern gaze on his men in wordless demand.

“It was worth it.” Arthur told him succinctly, not bothering with a full report as that, like a full explanation of whatever kind the princess decided to part with, would have to wait.

“Come morning,” Dany said once she’d won free of Alys’s strangling grasp, the barely-older girl seeming to suddenly grow six extra arms as she held her friend tight. “Our _Arron Ymitos_ will go into Qohor with his gains from his years as a sellsword, his goodfather _Ser Garin Cuy_ with him,” she gestured first to Ser Arthur with his still-blue hair and then Ser Gerold who would look no matter _what_ disguise they tried to use (as he’d discovered long ago under King Jaehaerys II) as exactly what he was: a noble knight of the Reach. “To purchase a manse in the mountainous, forested hills at the very eastern edge of the city’s territory, near to where it edges the ruined kingdom of Sarnor. A place where Ser _Garin’s_ family, as reduced as it is to a goodson,” she pointed again to Arthur. “A son,” then Oswell, “a gooddaughter,” Cerys, “and a pair of granddaughters and a traveling grandson.” She rested her head against Alys’s own and grinned, their minor resemblance from Valyrian blood showing through even with the hair color change, while Valen would be the missing grandson.

Cerys was the first one to speak after absorbing the entirety of Daenerys’s plan, finding it at once simpler and far more complex than the mummery they’d used to hide under in Braavos.

Though if events worked in Daenerys’s favor, at the very least it would involve less actual _hiding_ on the parts of all of them, which could only be to the good of all.

Especially the girls.

Children _needed_ sun and air to grow healthy and strong, such heavy isolation wasn’t salubrious for raising well-rounded young ladies.

There was just one item she wanted clarified: “Why so far from the city, princess?” She asked, frowning lightly. The distance would help keep them safe, yes, but would likewise make giving the girls playmates and allowing them to socialize normally more difficult.

In silent answer, Dany walked over to one of the carts that had been pulled up to one edge of the camp, pulled back the tarpaulin as the others followed her, and then unlocked and opened one of the chests once Arthur and Oswell unburied it from under the mound of horse tack, provisions, and even one of the money chests.

Gasps sounded from the other three, Oswell and Arthur’s eyes eating up the stunned-senseless and slack-jawed expression on their lord commander’s face with the eager eyes of little boys reaping the fine rewards of a long-planned prank.

“Any other questions?” Dany asked, a wicked grin splitting her face as the others shook their heads, rendered mute by a sight unseen in Westeros in more than twenty years.

That of dragon eggs in the possession of a Targaryen.

And worse for her enemies, potential and otherwise: one that had more than _one_ idea on how to hatch them, including one that was proven to work while the others were merely theoretical with likewise theoretical benefits.

One way or another, Daenerys Stormborn was _meant_ to become the Mother of Dragons.

Displaced into this world or not, who was she to fight such a destined fate?

Especially when it aligned so _nicely_ with her own plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Without giving into the desire to double-check wiki for the hundredth time, I'm 99.9% sure that Daemon Blackfyre and Aegor Bittersteel were half-brothers and both bastard sons later legitimized by Aegon the IV, aka Aegon the Unworthy.
> 
> In other news, this A/U's version of Jon Snow makes his debut next chapter.


	5. Chapter 5

**Reincarnation Redux**

**Chapter Five: Idealism is a Two-Faced Bitch**

Holy fuck, did she miss guns.

Not what guns _did_ per se or how they were used and often portrayed, but the sheer _equalizing_ power that a firearm gave that no other weapon in the history of her first world gave a person or that any of her new world could match.

Especially a person who would otherwise be disadvantaged in a physical fight.

Did she miss the wholesale slaughter that _also_ came hand in hand with guns on a scale that no other weapon could match?

Fuck _no._

But as someone who was female in a world so male dominated that it felt like being tossed six hundred years into the past, where strength often equaled steel and a sword arm, _yes,_ she missed the ability of a gun to level the playing field.

Adding insult to injury, she’d been _talented_ with sharpshooting in a way that she simply _wasn’t_ with hand-to-hand and middle-ages-esque martial combat.

A bow or a crossbow simply weren’t the same, including the fact that until someone invented a crossbow design to draw back the steel string, she couldn’t even _load_ a crossbow without assistance making using one a one-and-done proposition in her hands.

However, on the rare days when she was nursing bruises from weapons practice or her fingers were numb from drawing her bowstring and she felt like sulking over what she’d give to have even a simple .22 long rifle in her hands, she would immediately jump to what the likes of, say, Aerys Targaryen or in many ways _worse_ Tywin Lannister would do with an AR15 and quickly reminded herself that some things were better left alone and in her memories.

Better hygiene, however, _wasn’t_ one of those things even if indoor plumbing during her lifetime was likely little more than a pipe-dream (pun intended.)

…

_Last Moon 291 AC; Ymitos Manse, Qohor_

“I don’t like it.” Arthur folded his arms across his massive chest and scowled impressively.

For all the good it did him with his audience of one, as Daenerys rolled her eyes.

“When it comes to _anything_ that might put me in the slightest amount of danger, none of you,” in this case meaning the clucking mother hens that surrounded her in the form of three Dragonguards, Valen (when he returned to them from Westeros), and Lady Cerys. “Ever like it. And _yet_ no one knows better than any of you just how lethal this world would be for me if I wasn’t willing to take risks.”

“Learning to use weaponry and protect yourself _is not_ the same as bringing in outsiders or _setting yourself on fire.”_ He countered viciously, for once refusing to back down, dreams or not. There was a line. When it came to the Targaryen pyromaniac tendencies, he’d never taken any bullshit from _Rhaegar_ _or Viserys_ and he wasn’t about to start with Daenerys.

Aerys had been bad _enough_ that he’d quite literally managed to tar the entire Targaryen legacy with a taint of madness and _burned_ himself into the collective consciousness of Westeros.

Over Arthur’s dead body would Dany follow in his footsteps, even obliquely.

“We _need_ retainers or the Qohorik are going to start asking uncomfortable questions.” Dany ignored the real issue that she knew was at the heart of Arthur’s recent pattern of malcontent. 

Finding the dragon eggs had heralded it, especially as while Dany could feel heat from all of them before she ever set them in the hearth-coals in her bedchamber. Ever since, with Dany reaching fearlessly into the fire to turn them and sprinkle them with her blood (blood that hissed, sizzled, and then _soaked into the eggs_ ) Arthur in particular had been on edge. Granted, that first time she hadn’t thought to warn him, as Arthur was with her as her guard at the time and she nearly took a decade off his life from the shock of watching her turn white-coals-hot dragon eggs with her bare hands. So his anxiety surrounding the eggs and Dany’s behavior regarding them was at least somewhat justified.

Now if only he would stop watching her like a hawk lest she start juggling flaming coals - or whatever it was he was afraid she’d do - that would be _great._

Dany also wasn’t taking for granted the scars of the Mad King that lingered on her older companions, who had lived through the burnings and the wildfire deaths.

But it still stood to reason that they _had_ to come to terms with their fears and reluctance regarding fire, or else having dragons around was going to be a _wee bit problematic_ for everyone involved.

Hopefully when her White Bull returned from his task in Astapor and Braavos of gathering together a household for the manse, he’d manage to calm Arthur down as Oswell hadn’t had any luck thus far and Lady Cerys wasn’t even willing to try and slam her head against that particularly stubborn wall of recalcitrance.

“And I didn’t send Ser Gerold to buy an army,” more’s the pity, but Dany learned from the mistakes of others, even other _hers_ , and had no intention of repeating them if she could manage it. “A handful of freed slaves from the worst of the slave cities will be _far_ more loyal to those who freed them than ones who’d lived in relative comfort elsewhere.”

Which was true, as disgusting as it was to her to even think. The lot of a slave in Astapor was far and away _worse_ in every measure than that of one from Qohor. As heady as the idea was, Dany was reluctant to follow the steps of the Breaker of Chains.

All else aside, she wasn’t _true_ of this world and altering it so completely didn’t sit right.

It wasn’t her _place_ to alter the fabric of a world or change their social-evolutionary progression curve.

She wasn’t a god.

And even with dragons - whether three or seven - _one_ outsider couldn’t remake societies that were thousands of years old.

The Queen of Meereen’s struggles in Slavers’ Bay had taught her that and Slavers’ Bay was only the _tip_ of the problem of slavery when the _entire continent of Essos_ with the exceptions of Braavos and Lorath revolved around slavery.

All of which was beside the problem of the Long Night and ensuring there even _was_ a world to worry about once the Night King rose.

Afterward she might turn her gaze east.

In the meantime, she had to ensure that there were _still_ living people in shackles to break rather than free them first and have their lives only last a handful of years before the Winter killed them all.

“Hiring assassins, faking your death,” Arthur bit out, still scowling down at her. “Looting Mopatis’s manse, lying about our identities, purchasing slaves, hatching dragons, now this idea of using a sellsword company as a front for building an army?” He listed off. “It’s…”

“Dishonorable?” Dany offered blandly, arching a single unimpressed brow as she set aside her practice swords and then hopped up onto the low wall enclosing the practice yard where they’d been running drills when she finally got Arthur to vent what was on his mind. Or at least he did until he visibly bit his tongue rather than the word on the tip of his tongue. “Or distasteful maybe?” She held in a snort.

_Patience save her from honorable men, no wonder Arthur had gotten on so well with Rhaegar._

Or that Oswell, despite being just a few years older than both of them, hadn’t been one of their boon companions despite being far more loyal to Rhaegar than he was their Mad King of a father.

Os, with his dark humor, sarcasm, and pragmatism was far more Dany’s cup of tea as a friend than Arthur, though the latter was doing admirably in slotting into the “big brother” category while Ser Gerold, despite his being the most stern and unyielding was more like a grandfather than anything.

“Princess…” Arthur slackened just a bit, arms starting to lower and jaw loosening, fearring perhaps that he’d hurt her with his unvoiced disparagement.

“Oh, don’t.” She waved him off, smiling ruefully and shaking her head. “It’s not anything I haven’t thought myself, Arthur. You were my brother’s greatest friend and Rhaegar was an honorable, valiant, noble knight from all accounts, even to the point of marrying Lady Lyanna before her gods before bedding her.” At least according to Arthur’s and Oswell’s accounts of Harrenhal and all that came after. “But my honorable, valiant, noble brother fought and warred the same way he lived, and my brother _died_ of drowning at the now-dubbed _Ruby Ford_ because that fucking butcher Baratheon caved in his breastplate with his warhammer and then _stood over him while he drowned_ because he knew he couldn’t match him in single combat if _he’d_ done the honorable thing. Ser Jaime, from all of your tales, was also an _honorable_ knight.”

Arthur’s face had been losing more and more of his ire and resolve as grief and sorrow overtook him at her words, then he snarled at the mention of the aptly-named _Kingslayer._

“And honorable Ser Jaime stabbed my father in the back, then sat with his blood on the Iron Throne whilst the city was sacked around him. And _somehow,”_ she _did_ snort this time. “Still thought that his father would have enough _honor_ _and nobility_ to spare my goodsister and her children rather than getting up off his arse and protecting them himself. Honor is an _ideal_ , Ser Arthur,” she sighed, shaking his head. “And idealism is a two-faced bitch that will smile at you one moment and tear out your heart in the next. Something to aspire to, not a way to live in an imperfect world. So,” her smile was bitter. “I’ll use every nasty, cunning, underhanded, ignoble, filthy trick I have in my arsenal to avenge my noble brother and his innocent family. Andal honor brought my family nothing by pain and destruction. I’ll bring the Andals what they fled from their homeland to avoid, as my ancestor Aegon did: I’ll bring them Fire and Blood.”

“What happens when they fear you more than they loved your brother?” Arthur asked a long moment of silence later. “When the fear and the blood threatens to undo all you seek to build?”

“Then I’ll give them mercy.” She countered, tilting her head with a cat’s smile on her face. “My friends will be lifted up and my enemies torn down. I’ll never have their love, a conqueror never does. But after I’ve brought them peace, they’ll love my children and their children for it, as Westeros loved Jaehaerys the Wise and Good Queen Alysanne.”

“You’ve a grim view of the world, Princess.” Arthur finally allowed his shoulders to slump, reaching out and pulling her dainty form into a sideways hug. “If he was alive Rhaegar would hate that we’ve allowed the world and his fate to burden you so.”

“If Rhaegar was alive,” Dany smiled a bit at the idea. “I’d probably be betrothed to one of his sons and be raised as a proper princess of House Targaryen.”

Arthur couldn’t help but snicker at the image of a tight-laced _Princess Daenerys_ laboring over needlework with other high ladies of the realm over dainty teacups.

Not because it was ludicrous, he knew that Lady Cerys was thorough in managing the little princess’s highborn education, but because it was so very _out of character_ despite her ladylike accomplishments to simply sit and be decorative.

“I don’t know,” Arthur said pursing his lips and looking up at the sky in contemplation. “I can’t see _you_ minding your curtsy and playing Knights and Maidens. Being one of a hundred other highborn daughters set for a highborn match.” He shook his head. “Sneaking out of the Red Keep and turning Rhaegar’s hair grey - and he’d deserve it the prat - on the other hand…”

It was some time before they returned to their practice, as once more Arthur filled Dany’s ears with one of Rhaegar’s traipses through Flea Bottom or the Hook or the Street of Seeds, depending on which of the White Cloaks was accompanying him.

Inside the manse, Cerys looked up from mending one of her Queen’s training tunics, already anticipating when Ser Gerold would return with servants for their household, and smiled softly at the sound of Arthur’s deep chuckle and Daenerys’s tinkling giggles.

The sound heralded a breaking of the tension that had taken over the manse in the last weeks, and glad she was of it.

The mule-headed pair would drive e’en a saint to drink when they were at odds.

 _Finally,_ she thought to herself. _‘Tis good Arthur’s a White Cloak, his stubbornness would have seen him ill-suited to being anything else, even_ with _the sponsorship of a crown prince._

…

Ser Gerold made good time to and from Astapor.

Unfortunately for those left behind on the edge of Qohorik territory, it wasn’t good _enough._

…

It seemed like an easy mark.

The information their band’s contact in Qohor had given them was solid: a large manse on the edge of being inside the Qohorik border near Sarnor’s former holdings.

A couple of sellswords, one with plenty of white in his beard and hair. One woman who would be worth a pretty penny in any pillow house, two young girls who would be worth even _more_ once their purity was confirmed. And if the more sensible members of their outfit managed to keep the ones who were truly foul from tainting them before they could get them to either Slavers’ Bay or maybe even Lys if they could find a slaver going that way in Tyrosh.

The females at least looked Lyseni anyway, so it would almost be like a homecoming for them as pampered pleasure slaves rather than tucked away in the wilds of the Qohorik forest, which was no place for such beauties to hide and wither away.

They did their due diligence: only two of the sellswords were present, the greybeard off elsewhere - all the better as sometimes greybeards with their wealth of experience could be worse than fighting youngbloods.

It should have been easy with a party of a dozen bandit raiders including a Dothraki outcast who’d been shunned by his people for some crime or another.

It wasn’t.

…

_First Moon of 292 AC; Ymitos Manse, Qohorik Wildelands_

It was the screaming that woke her.

Not the screaming of the bandits attacking her new home, or from Aly or Lady Cerys.

Certainly not from Arthur and Os.

The two knights were far too seasoned to waste their breath screaming and shouting and bellowing like callow youths when they had a dozen or so attackers to repel.

And repelling them, they were.

From the patchwork of leather armor with the odd piece of steel or the far cheaper options of bronze or iron, these raiders who’d likely thought a manse with only two guards, a woman, and two children at the moment would be easy pickings had never faced the likes of the Dragonguard.

Some often disparaged them as glorified bodyguards, especially outside of a time of war or unrest when the white cloaks spent the bulk of their time either training or standing around in pristine armor.

They forgot that only the greatest of warriors were ever elevated to the Kingsguard, or as it was now the Dragonguard until Dany took her birthright from the fat whoremongering butcher that was currently seated none-too-comfortably upon it, the populace forgetting that the knights who donned a white cloak were far more lethal than their contemporaries simply because they were ready and willing to both kill and die at their posts every moment of every day.

Arthur Dayne, Oswell Whent, and even Gerold Hightower with his hair gone grey were some of the deadliest killers alive.

Raiders attacking _anyone_ under their charge without vastly overwhelming numbers did so having made an _extreme_ miscalculation.

No, the screaming that woke her and would likely haunt her memory for years to come, was coming from the horses trapped in the flaming stables, the raiders having set it aflame - or at least so she supposed - as a distraction for the pair of knights.

One that didn’t work, as no sooner had the pair caught the sight of the first cutthroat than the stables were abandoned and the knights set to work clearing out the riffraff.

And still, the horses _screamed._

Dany couldn’t stand it.

Even reborn into a far harsher world and life than her first, she still retained the same soft spots though was certainly more conscientious about hiding them and keeping them from becoming common knowledge.

Children were one, the smaller the child the bigger the weakness.

Animals, naturally, even the most fearsome predators, were another.

It would take someone with both a harder heart for the terrified screams of the innocent horses and/or a much deeper streak of self-preservation than her to ignore the haunting shrieks, each one like a dagger to her empathy and conscience.

She already knew before she darted out of her room in her night clothes of simple undyed cotton pants and tunic, her dagger in hand, that once her knights discovered what she was about to do - given it didn’t kill her - that she was _never_ going to hear the end of it and would be dealing with lectures, disappointed looks, and training that never ended and _still_ it didn’t stop her.

Dany talked a good game about leaving this world to its own evolution, about idealism and how it wasn’t her place to _fix_ things to better align with her “standards”, but when suffering was shoved in her face, she had never been one to look away and do nothing.

Avoidance got her only so far, hence why she’d sent Ser Gerold to Astapor rather than go herself.

Had she _seen_ it the way her “other” self did, she couldn’t have left them to their current fates no matter that she _did_ firmly believe that the Long Night needed to be averted _first_ before taking on the issue of the Essosi slave trade.

Darting out into the stable yard, Dany quickly clocked the dancing shadows and light of the raging fire, the flickering light and sudden flares from sparks igniting highlighting the clang and clatter and grunts that accompanied Arthur and Os making the raiders regret every last one of their life choices that led them to this particular point.

There weren’t any bodies in the hundred-or-so years she estimated rested between the back of the manse itself and the nearest stable door, which wasn’t alight - yet - the fire still chewing its way from hayloft at the front of the stable to the east side that was Dany’s potential entrance.

It said something about the true cacophony that was a stable fire that the clash of weapons-on-weapons that was battle-song could just _barely_ be heard over the pounding of panicked hooves crashing against the wooden stable doors and the shrieks of horses and the roar of a hungry fire.

Between the noise and Dany’s laser-locked focus on getting into the stables and freeing the horses, it probably _shouldn’t_ have been a shock that the din of the Dragonguard doing what they do best wasn’t the _only_ sound that was covered up.

Like that of boots on the dusty ground of the stable yard, or the creak of poor-quality boiled leather armor, that would have under any _other_ circumstances warned her of her company long before she was within grabbing range.

But it _was,_ so she _didn’t,_ until she found herself rudely startled out of her self-appointed mission via a dirty fist snatching her up off her feet by her hair.

Reborn or not, she _was_ only nine years old and not the _largest_ nine year old girl by any measure, picking her up - no matter how someone went about it - wasn’t exactly a challenge.

The sharp pain of having all of her weight abruptly dragging down on her hair had her letting out a short yelp of pain, which as she was turned to face her attacker brought a wide - and _fucking ugly_ \- grin to the bronzed skin face of the asshole with pock-marked skin, yellowed teeth - the ones that weren’t missing anyway - and leering murky-mud-brown eyes.

 _“Pretty pretty.”_ The fuckhead crooned, his slimy voice simpering, a mockery of a sickening kind as if his ravenous eyes eating up her tiny form wasn’t bad enough. _“Worth a pretty penny, pretty, and with the others dead, all for me.”_

Spending time wandering around Braavos pretending to be a street rat had taught her more than how to slip around in the shadows unseen or pick a pocket or a lock with ease. It had also taught her the more common languages spoken by the poorer parts of Essos rather than the various bastardized versions of High Valyrian favored by the rich and merchant classes. There were variations based (from what she could tell) on the degree of meshing between low Valyrian, Ghiscari, and Rhoynar depending on how close the location was to the old strongholds of those destroyed kingdoms, but this far northeast the average poor person spoke a patois of low Valyrian mixed with Dothraki and the dead language of Sarnor.

At the moment only Dany and Os spoke it with any sort of competence, having picked it up on the merchant trail from Pentos to Qohor, with the others coming slowly along.

Now it had to be said that Dany hadn’t had any high hopes of intelligence from anyone willing to attack a location guarded by Arthur and Os with less than a score of men, even if they _were_ clever enough to set a distraction like a stable fire.

That said, either the bandit who’d managed to avoid being gutted thus far was either _particularly_ stupid outside of the low cunning needed to sneak away when he saw the direction the fight was turning _or_ was just that distracted by his own disgusting imaginings of what he was planning to do to Dany before selling her off.

Why?

Because the fucking piece of shit kiddie-fiddler had lifted her by her hair and rather than do the _smart_ thing, like, say _taking away her fucking knife,_ he’d decided to leer and brag instead.

_What a fucking dumbass._

Without waiting a beat - her instincts had always been set to _fight_ over flee or freeze anyway, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise - she whipped up her left hand rather than grab for her hair or kick out and swiped the well-forged steel that under the watchful eyes of the Dragonguard she kept honed to a razer edge as it was her last line of defense through her waist-length fall of silver-blonde curls.

Before the suicidal idiot could do more than _goggle_ over suddenly having a handful of hair without the dangling weight of a girl attached, Dany was lunging forward on the balls of her feet, having dropped down exactly as Arthur had taught her rather than stumbling and falling onto her ass, and drove her dagger into the unarmored skin of his belly, ripping sideways with all the muscle she could bring to bear from right-to-left and then spun, blood coating her from her dagger-tip to her forearm and all down her front back for the still-screaming horses.

Her newly-shorn hair clung to the sticky blood splattering her face, and behind her the bandit slumped to his knees, his guts from being eviscerated by a child half his size spilling out onto the ground, too startled from the sudden turn to even scream.

Altogether, it took less than two minutes.

 _So that’s why they always have us repeat the same movements over and over again._ Dany thought absently to herself regarding the rigorous training of the Dragonguard. _My body moved without me even having to put thought into it, I just..._ knew.

Sensible, she decided, staunchly ignoring that she’d just brutally gutted a man, given that muscle-memory was a thing, despite her new world not having the verbiage for it yet or knew exactly why it worked.

Just that it did, so they used it without having to know the whys and therefores of it.

Taking a deep breath as she hit the stable door and ducking down to avoid the smoke cover as best she could, she felt the wood and steeled her nerves when it was only a bit warmer than usual instead of overheated.

Good. Her unexpected delay hadn’t given the fire time to hit that end of the stable.

Yet, anyway.

Bracing herself, she pushed the door open, screams ringing in her ears.

Then for what might be the first time in her new life: she prayed.

…

_Fourth Moon of 294 AC; Starfall, Dorne, Westeros_

Lady Ashara Dayne had known since the end of the Butcher’s Rebellion - as “Robert’s” Rebellion was called in Dorne - that this day would come.

That whoring butcher of an asshole had made it his unspoken _mission_ to punish every last house and family of Targaryen loyalists remaining in the Seven Kingdoms, and it was only his (rightful) fear of what would happen if he dared to cross the Red Mountains with an army that kept him from forcing Dorne to pay a price in blood for their support of their Princess Elia’s husband and good-family.

As it was, only Jon Arryn traveling personally to Sunspear to give the bones of Elia and her sweet babes to the Martells had kept Dorne from rising in rebellion outright and bleeding the Baratheon cunt and his Lannister murderer of a good-father for ever ounce of blood they could take from them.

The Iron Throne didn’t have dragons any longer after all - winged or three-headed - and it was to House Targaryen that Dorne had sworn alliance via marriage not House Baratheon.

Even so, Baratheon would have his pound of flesh from House Dayne for their support of Rhaegar and her brother Arthur’s rumored-assistance in Lyanna Stark’s so-called “abduction.”

Ashara held in a derisive snort.

_Abduction her ass._

Lyanna Stark wasn’t some meek, weak-willed, mild flower of a highborn lady.

No, Lyanna Stark was as much a wild wolf as _Ashara’s_ own wild wolf in her eldest brother Brandon, and fought as well or better than any trained squire at the least and some knights at best.

Moreover, Ashara had _seen_ Elia’s reaction to Rhaegar’s action, and met the pair for herself as she played messenger between the princess and her husband and his new second-wife. If there was a woman more besotted with Rhaegar than Lyanna, she’d never seen her. Well. Perhaps Cersei Lannister, but Ashara had always seen _that_ spoiled twat’s infatuation with Rhaegar as more along the lines of obsession over something she _couldn’t have_ than any true feeling.

As it ever was however, history was written by the victors, and rather than the rebellion being about the _true_ cause (Aerys burning one of his great lords _alive)_ it became about abduction, rape, death, and tragedy fit for a minstrels song rather than abuses of a monarch’s power.

Regardless of all that, there were still moments when Ashara feared that the Butcher’s desire to punish House Dayne would overcome Jon Arryn’s control of him or his desire to pander to his “brother in all but blood” Ned Stark. They’d been punished _unofficially_ alongside the rest of Dorne, paying higher taxes and tariffs whenever they wished to trade with the remainder of Westeros, but for a bloodthirsty prick like Robert Baratheon it had never been enough. Especially when all of Dorne responded by simply refusing to do business with the rest of the Seven Kingdoms and simply switched to importing and exporting goods to-from Essos and the Summer Islands instead.

It was for Ned - good, sweet, quiet Ned, who had only wanted his remaining family returned alive but been foiled by Lyanna’s death in childbed - that Robert gritted his teeth and stayed his hand over House Dayne. It was at Ned’s request that Ashara’s son was legitimized - though not as a Stark, Robert wasn’t _that_ soft for Ned and Ned not _that_ honorable - as a Dayne and secondary heir of House Dayne. Ned refused to allow his brother Brandon’s son to live as a bastard. Robert saw an opportunity to soothe tensions with his closest friend over the infamous _dragonspawn_ moment.

And so her sweet babe with ebony Rhoynish curls, pale Northern-Stark skin, and bright purple eyes that were a match for her brother Arthur’s was born Asher Sand and on his first name day made Asher Dayne.

Brandon chose the name in one of their handfuls of letters between their meeting and his death, her wild wolf only learning of the gift he’d blessed her with a mere fortnight before his murder.

Left up to her, Ashara would have called him either Theon, after the Hungry Wolf, Brandon’s favorite ancestor, or mayhaps Jon after the builder of the Wolf’s Den.

Her wild wolf, despite his reputation as being brash and bold and uncaring of scholarly pursuits, wasn’t unlearned and like House Dayne as a Stark traced his history back to the First Men and knew the Old Tongue.

Knowledge that allowed him to know the origin of Ashara’s name, Asher, meaning “happy, blessed” in the Old Tongue.

Bastard children were no shame in Dorne, born of passion as they were, and they both saw their little one as a blessing even if Brandon was merely resigned to carrying on an affair with Ashara being unable to break his betrothal to that cold, supercilious brat Catelyn Tully unless/until his father died and Brandon became Lord of Winterfell.

Noone could have predicted what came next, or how soon that Rickard Stark would die, Brandon following within moments at the hands of Aerys’s notorious wicked, cruel inclinations.

Ashara had done her best to live up to her name, even mourning her wolf and missing her brother when he left for Essos. Messages from Arthur were few and far between, lest they draw attention to his potential location, but at least her beloved brother was alive. It was more than many Dornish women could say after Baratheon had the entire ten thousand spears that had been led against the rebel forces by Prince Ser Lewyn Martell were slaughtered.

In some cases, not even their bones were returned, one of the worst of the insults and wounds Baratheon and his Lannister wife paid Dorne, but certainly not the last.

Ashara raised her son with the help of her oldest brother, who (despite what Baratheon probably would’ve preferred, the asshole likely hoping that House Dayne would fall to her son instead) gave her sweet, quiet Ash who took more after his uncles Arthur and Ned than he did his parents in many ways a playmate in his own son Edric within a year.

They _were_ happy, despite their reduced family and reduced circumstances with easy trade for Starfall curtailed, but she’d always been waiting for the other boot to fall.

Two moons ago, it finally came with a letter from Baratheon, sealed with both the king’s seal and that of his hand: her sweet son, happy and loved in Dorne, was to be ripped from her arms and all he knew to be fostered until he came of age in four years at Winterfell, in the ancient fortress of his father’s family.

She had to give Baratheon - though it likely belonged to either Arryn or one of the flock of Lannisters that crammed the Red Keep’s court to brimming - credit.

It was a cunning punishment for Ashara and House Dayne.

Not that Ned would allow her son to be abused.

She didn’t believe _that_ for a minute.

But neither could she truly believe her beloved son, her blessing from Brandon, would be happy in Winterfell either as it was ruled by Ned’s frigid trout of a wife - her wild wolf’s former betrothed who he’d “dishonored” by taking other women to his bed.

Now icy, bitchy, _proper_ Catelyn Tully would have to live with the very _embodiment_ of Brandon’s wandering eye in the Stark stronghold.

It made a wrathful watchfulness come to life in Ashara’s chest.

 _One word_ of mistreatment from that cunt and Ashara would have her brother call their banners, to raze Riverrun _to the ground._

Doran’s long patience over Elia’s murderers bedamed.

The living came before the dead.

And if Ashara knew her dead best friend _at all_ , Elia would’ve agreed with her.

Oh yes, Catelyn Tully better watch her step with Ashara’s son.

In the end, House Dayne may fall for a time, but they would always be reborn, and if she was right about what Arthur was up to, this time it would be with fire and blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last line is a play on a non-canon version of House Dayne's words that I found online "Fallen and Reborn" that I really like for this fic.
> 
> And yes, if you haven't seen the discussion in other places, Ashara's son Asher "Ash" Sand/Dayne is this fic's version of Jon Snow.
> 
> Next chapter we'll be jumping back to Essos and Dany, so don't kill me yet over the cliffhanger...


	6. Chapter 6

**Reincarnation Redux**

**Chapter Six: Only Hope**

_First Moon of 292 AC; Ymitos Manse, Qohorik Wildelands_

At the sight of a pile of silver-blond hair in a pool of blood beside a gutted raider, Ser Oswell Whent felt his heart stop in his chest, if only for a moment.

It restarted with a painful jolt at the wounded bellow his brother gave, Arthur as ever one step ahead of him in piecing situation together, Os springing forward to tackle the larger knight to the ground before the fucking suicidal idiot could run full-tilt into the burning stables as the terrified horses began pouring out of the doors that were opening from the inside.

There was only _one_ person in all the world that Os knew who both _could and would_ run into a burning fire with the expectation of survival.

And as much as it pained both of them: Arthur wasn’t their foolhardy princess with her Valyrian immunity to fire.

Whether it was the evidence of the princess being attacked, the imminent danger she was in every moment she was surrounded by panicked horses, or the aforementioned _burning building_ that had Arthur losing his damn _mind_ , or a combination of all of the above, Os wasn’t certain but he wasn’t about to lose the princess’s fucking _father in all but name_ when she was clearly still alive if not necessarily _well_ given the givens.

“Calm down!” Os snapped as Arthur fought and flailed, not _quite_ to the point of panic of truly striking out against his brother in arms but getting there at speed. And there’d been enough bloodshed that night without Os having to brain Arthur to keep him under control. Or equally as likely as Os rarely won a fair fight against the Sword of Morning, Arthur accidentally-on-purpose doing _Os_ irreparable damage because the massive prat forgot to pull his strength in his fright. _“She’s_ immune to fire, you ass, _you’re_ not!”

Os was ready to give it up as a lost cause and knock the uncooperative asshole out, when the bucking bull beneath him suddenly stilled, Arthur panting and staring at the barn in a daze.

Not letting up on his hold on the aurochs masquerading as a swordsman, Os dared a glance up at the burning stables only to find his own jaw going slack and his eyes widening at the sight that met his awed gaze.

She was a little thing.

Daenerys had _always_ been a little thing for as long as Os could remember and from the late Ser Willem’s recollections had been since she was born early at Dragonstone.

That didn’t lessen the impact of seeing a living person wreathed, crowned, and cloaked by writhing flame, as his princess walked as calmly out of a raging inferno with all the care another lady would have given sauntering into her own bedchamber.

Well, if she was naked as the day she was born and covered in ash anyway.

“Rhaegar couldn’t do that.” Os managed to relocate his tongue as he released his hold on Arthur and climbed to his feet, his brother mirroring him with only a minor glare for stymieing his suicidal knee-jerk reaction at the assumption the princess had dared the flames to save their horses.

“None of the Targaryens could as far as I know.” Arthur replied as he shrugged out of his cloak while they hurried over to the princess’s side, wrapping her up tightly and sweeping her into the safety of his arms without so much as a by-your-leave. “You scared a decade off my life, little one.” Arthur breathed out, burying his face into the curve of her neck and shoulder as petite arms made strong from years of training came up and circled his wide neck.

“You need to save some antics for your young adulthood, princess.” Os teased her, pursing his lips and rubbing one hand over her bared scalp, wrinkling his nose at the ash that came off on his fingers - likely the remnants of her once-glorious hair. “Otherwise Arthur is going to go true grey faster than our stubborn old bull.”

Arthur looked down into her sweet face, blinking and cocking his head to the side as - despite the danger of the night and the knowledge that his little one had taken her first life as a result - he noticed that the hair on her head wasn’t the only place the fire had burned it away.

Swallowing a snicker at the ridiculous sight she made, he coughed a little and then smirked.

“I think, my friend.” He spoke to Os even though Dany was frowning up at him in confusion, rubbing one thumb over her missing eyebrows which made her eyes go wide and dismayed in realization. “That the, ah, _side effects_ of her latest attempts to age me before my time might be prevention enough regarding any more truly foolhardy stunts.”

Dany groaned, burying her face in his armor.

“I’m bald head-to-toe, aren’t I?” She asked in horror, voice muffled as she tried to smother herself in Arthur’s embrace.

The pair of guffaws that met her question were answer enough.

Well...fuck.

…

It was dawn by the time the inhabitants of the manse were settling back into their beds, all save Arthur who was taking the first watch.

The fire had to be put out, the raiders’ bodies stripped and burned, Os back-tracked their trail and returned with their horses and gear, baths were needed, and so on.

Still, it was no surprise for him to glance into the princess’s room and find her awake despite her obvious exhaustion, sitting up and staring into the banked coals of the fireplace. She’d wrapped a blanket from the bed around her and had her feet up on the seat of her chair, her chin resting on her knees and her arms circling her legs. In the white-hot coals the seven dragon eggs glowed with a beauty that had nothing to do with the light of the banked fire and - if his guess was right about what the princess was planning - everything to do with their reaction to her strong Valyrian blood being fed to them.

He hadn’t lied to Oswell: none of the Targaryens he’d known or heard of were known to be as immune to fire as Daenerys was proving.

Some were resistant to heat, others could walk over hot coals or hold one in their hand, but walking into an inferno and out the other side with not a sign of harm other than missing hair?

It was unheard of.

The sort of magical happening that was the stock of myths and legends that went hand-in-hand with tales of Valyrian pyromancers.

Or, perhaps, dragonlords.

Arthur had always dismissed the Targaryen obsession with dragons and fire as one of the signs of instability, but what if it wasn’t?

What if there was _more_ to the connection between the waning of the dragons and that of House Targaryen?

It was merely academic at this point: Daenerys was going to do what she would, and not even for him would she cease her plans.

But it was certainly something for him to consider during long watches, and if he found it true...well, he’d owe Rhaegar an apology over his dismissiveness regarding Rhaegar’s interest in magic and prophecy and the like when they met in the afterlife.

Moving into the room, Arthur came to knee at his princess’s side, even now finding a spark of humor at the entertaining picture she made - and would likely for some weeks hence - without so much as a single hair on her head and face.

“Princess?”

Dany turned her head to face him head-on, her cheek coming to rest on her knee, showing off the _other_ difference that came with the inferno, one far less humorous than her sudden attack of baldness.

Almost as if they’d sparked and changed with her show of power, her eyes were no longer the pretty lilac that matched her late mother’s own lovely gaze.

Instead, seated large and intense in her elfin face were orbs fashioned of purest amethyst, a strong and deep purple that matched Rhaegar’s for depth but without the hints of black and dark blue that turned his eyes more toward indigo than true Valyrian purple.

Easy to mistake in low light, dismissed as a cause of the darkness around them, but in the light of the banked fire and candles now unmistakable.

Arthur remembered meeting Aemon Targaryen just once before the maester of Castle Black when blind and his gaze was covered in grey clouds, having accompanied Rhaegar to meet his “uncle maester” and the oldest living Targaryen in the world as far as anyone knew. That venerable man’s gaze had been shocking in its bright purple tone, filled with wisdom, pain, and experience alike. And even so: Daenerys’s were more striking still.

What little Arthur knew about magic from Rhaegar’s ramblings said that there was magic in kings’ blood.

Seeing Daenerys now...he believed it.

“I killed that man, Arthur.” Dany said, having been sitting there ever since Lady Cerys stopped fussing over her to return to her own bed and brooding on it. “I didn’t hesitate for a moment after he grabbed my hair. I just,” she mimed lifting her arm and slicing off her hair. “And then…”

“Good.” Arthur responded, already knowing that it _probably_ wasn’t what either Cerys or Gerold would want him to say, but then Arthur wasn’t known for his empathy towards enemies either so he didn’t know what else anyone would expect from him. “That means we’ve trained you right. You’re not supposed to hesitate, little one. You’re supposed to react and to live. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s the way of the world: live and fight, or live and die. Call me partial, but I’ll never be saddened that you’re here and another is not.”

“That’s literally your oath, Arthur.” Dany snorted, shaking her head a little where she rested it on her leg.

“And I’ll never betray it.” Arthur reminded her, rubbing one hand gently over the baby-soft skin of her scalp. “You’re my entire reason for being, little one, for going on when my prince and friend and brother is dead. I wouldn’t trade your life for a hundred thousand raider scum or a pirate princess from the Summer Isles.”

“The last Targaryen,” Dany sighed, glancing towards the dragon eggs that called her more and more as the days past. “The last one with claim to the throne.”

Arthur nodded, humming softly under his breath.

“The only hope for your loyal subjects, and to avenge your family.” Arthur added, then grinned wickedly. “A heavy burden for such little shoulders.” Moving with his infamous speed, the Sword of Morning swooped her up into his arms and carried her over to her bed, tucking her in with practiced hands. “Good thing that I’ll always be able to carry you when it becomes too heavy.”

“You’re such a mummer, Arthur.” Dany smiled softly, mind taken from her troubles at least for the moment.

He hummed, shrugging as he ran the side of one long finger down the bridge of her nose.

“Your mummer.” He countered, with a courtly bow. “Your strong arm, your sword and shield, and come the morn the worst taskmaster you’ve ever had.” He warned, snapping to serious in an instant even as she groaned under her breath at the _creative_ way Cerys and Arthur had decided to handle her impulsiveness.

Mainly by making sure she didn’t have so much as an _ounce_ of energy to waste on impulses that could get her killed long before she was of age to claim her throne.

Or worse: turned them all prematurely grey from fright.

…

_Tenth Month of 292 AC; Ymitos Manse, Qohorik Wildelands_

Gerold could help but arch a questioning brow at the sight the young queen made when he returned from his long journey to Astapor and back.

Where before her long silver-blonde hair had reached to her waist when unbound, there in front of him was a little hoyden who would pass for a boy with fae curls that barely touched her ears and eyes that from his perspective had suddenly darkened overnight.

There wasn’t a single hint of gold or yellow in Daenerys’s hair, the blonde turned completely white with strands of silver, whatever change she’d undergone working its will on her locks as well as her eyes, simply in opposite measures.

Thick mink-dark lashes and arching brows completed the picture, replacing the once-blonde, but her skin was as pearl moon-pale as always and her smile just as joyous.

“Princess,” he went down on one knee and bowed his head, the others behind him mirroring his movement as his sworn brothers and Ser Valen watched the newcomers with hands on swordhilts ready to strike at a moment’s notice. As it should be. “I have returned as you have ordered.”

“From a successful mission at that, Ser Gerold.” Dany cast her gaze over the score of now-former slaves who she had sent her Lord Commander to gather, pausing only briefly on the halo of springy curls around a young and pretty nut-brown face. “Please rise and be at ease and welcomed back to my side. There is much we must speak of.”

And she didn’t just mean the names of the former-slaves and what their duties were to be.

A fact he was quick to realize as a chorus of shrieks cried from overhead before his queen, Ser Valen, and his sworn brother Arthur were suddenly turned from calm - if a bit dusty from sword practice - figures into perches.

For _living dragons_ from the black balanced on his queen’s shoulders and watching Gerold with suspicion to the cream curling around Valen’s neck with - was that a purr? - a pair resting on Arthur’s shoulders as three more shrieked in what if asked Gerold would call protest over being beaten to their person-shaped ledges to rest rather than having to land on the edge of the roof _._

However, being a Lord Commander for the Kingsguard of two kings and now a queen-in-exile, he didn’t comment merely giving her a _look_ that spoke volumes where their new servants and guards couldn’t see it from behind him.

“Then let us adjourn, Princess.” Was all he said instead of anything else, handing off settling the new guards to Valen with a commanding look while Cerys glided forward to take the eight servants (well, seven servants and a child in truth) in hand.

…

_First Moon of 294 AC; Small Council Chambers, The Red Keep, King’s Landing_

Jon Arryn felt older than ever as he entered the Small Council chambers after his meeting the night before with the King.

With Robert.

By all the gods, when had the boisterous boy he’d fostered disappeared and this spiteful, vengeful spendthrift taken his place?

Had it always been in him?

Had he just been blinded to it, as blind as Ned when he insisted that Robert would make a good and true husband to his sister?

Jon had known better, but it had been a sound political match nonetheless, so he’d encouraged it.

Would that he hadn’t.

How much would be different now if Robert and Rhaegar - cousins, _close_ bloodkin - had never come to battle over the hand and love of a wild northern rose?

There were moments - more and more the older he grew - where Jon questioned if having to act as Robert’s hand and spend the years where he _should_ be dandling grandchildren on his knee dealing with an unstable wife and an even more unstable kingdom was the price for his sin of hubris in thinking to arrange marriages despite his personal failures in matrimony.

Oh, the smallfolk were content enough, but the more Robert spends and the further into debt the crown falls the greater the chance that that contentedness would fade away like a fever dream.

Summer would end soon enough.

As old as he was, Jon knew that better than most.

Nothing fermented unrest quite so efficiently as starvation, and when winter came as it always did if the crown didn’t have the funds to subsidize the cost of food for the smallfolk and the nobility alike, unrest would be just what they had on their hands, the likes of which that would make both Balon’s Folly and Robert’s Rebellion look like childish tantrums.

Now Robert’s latest round of spite was designed to poke at the hornets’ nest that was Dorne, stirring up trouble in the _last_ place they needed it with more and more Lannister lackeys crowding the court and the wounds of the rebellion far from healed as far as the southernmost of the Seven Kingdoms was concerned.

“My lords.” Jon greeted the scant number of the Small Council. “Grand Maester.”

Robert’s younger brother Stannis, the Master of Ships merely nodded gruffly, as stern as ever while the even-older-than-Jon Grand Maester Pycelle muttered a greeting. Varys smiled - always a cause for alarm when the Master of Whispers was happy in his experience - the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Ser Barristan Selmy eyeing him with suspicion to equal Jon’s own. Meanwhile the newest addition to the council as of two years before when the last Master of Coin, Jon’s appointment Petyr Baelish died of a mugging outside one of his _establishments_ , fidgeted restlessly.

Jon still wasn’t certain if it was the strain of trying to sort out the tangle that the royal accounts had become under Baelish or that of spying on the council for the Queen, as Pycelle answered first-and-last to her father Tywin, but either way it was clear that Lord Lionel Lefford, a Westerlands’ man that had been appointed by Robert under Cersei’s poisoned council, sat ill at ease in his position at the council table.

Good.

If the gods were good, he’d crack under the pressure and Jon could appoint a leal man of the Stormlands, Eyrie, or even the North in his place.

As it was, elderly Lord Estermont was getting long in the tooth to continue on much longer as Master of Laws, Robert’s grandfather or not, and would need to be replaced soon no matter that Robert wanted to plant his youngest brother in the seat at a much-too-young of an age, Renly having barely taken up true control of Storm’s End.

“News before old business.” Jon began. “Robert has decided to _honor_ House Dayne with having Asher Dayne fostered by his paternal uncle, Lord Stark.”

Grumbles, nods, and a cluck of Varys’s tongue was all the reaction expected and obtained at _that_ news.

None of the lords aware of Robert’s ongoing cold war with Dorne were in any rush to worsen affairs. Bad enough that Dorne had already cut off all trade north after the last round of tariffs, choosing to risk trade across the sea rather than the safer land routes over the Red Mountains. As House Dayne was one of the oldest and noblest houses in Dorne, taking away Lady Ashara’s son and sending him to his uncle was _not_ going to be met with anything else than an increase in Dornish ire towards the Iron Throne given that it would _also_ place the legitimized bastard boy in the home of his father’s former-betrothed.

Oh yes, Robert had kicked the hive but good this time, it was only a matter of when and how it would strike back at _all_ of the rest of Westeros in response that was the question.

“My little birds have it that young Asher Dayne has the making to match his famous uncle in combat.” Varys supplied softly. “Perhaps sending him to foster with his honorable uncle Ned is _not_ the worst decision the king could have made.”

“Maybe if he’d sent him as a babe.” Garyn Estermont shook his head, feeling bone-tired from trying to keep a handle on his grandson’s follies. A lost cause, he knew by now. Still, it was his duty to try and all men must do their duty. “A young Dornishman with skill at arms and raised in the bosom of House Dayne will not be so pliable, _especially_ if he’s anything like the Sword of Morning.”

If anything, the boy was likely to resent the throne for tearing him away from his family and exiling him to the frozen north, though none of them would say as such lest it travel to the wrong ears.

Taking the matter as closed - and it was a royal command, so it was, the Hand of the King simply informing them to allow them time to prepare for the fallout - Varys waited a beat for one of the others to speak if they had information before supplying his own.

Though even he didn’t quite know what to make of it, if it _was_ true and not just a particularly odd rumor.

“Speaking of the Sword of Morning,” he said with faux-idleness, smiling smugly on the inside as all eyes snapped over and fixed on him. “My little birds have, perhaps, located him at last.”

“Indeed?” Jon’s brows rose high on his forehead in surprise. “After all these years?”

“Indeed, Lord Hand.” Varys bowed his head slightly. “Many believed that the two missing Kingsguard had died as well in the fire in Braavos.”

Tragic thing that, Varys thought wistfully. Viserys had seemed unstable but easily manipulated. A good tool in the proper hand. His loss _was_ a blow, but not so much as that of the Princess. The losses of the rest of their retainers was simply insult to injury, but even so Arthur Dayne - due to the lack of a certain sword being in the ruins - and possibly Oswell Whent had been harder to confirm as dead for Varys and his contacts in Essos.

With the death of his old friend Illyrio a few moons later, gaining reliable information from Essos had become an exercise in patience and sorting the wheat from the chaff.

“But you couldn’t confirm.” Stannis frowned, the whole affair of the burned estate sitting ill with him, especially as Robert had barely been restrained from throwing an actual celebration when he’d heard. Distasteful of him, to say the least, but it was nothing less than expected from the boorish king.

“Not until now,” Varys folded his arms gracefully across his chest. “A contact I trust quite firmly reports that Whent appears to have founded a sellsword company called the Mourning Spears, bringing in his former sworn brother though he’d had to pull him bodily from drinking himself to death in Braavos to manage it.”

Stannis grimaced while the others appeared shocked silent at the turn the tale of the Sword of Morning had taken.

“The idea of two of the foremost Targaryen loyalists left alive at the heads of a sellsword company fills me with nothing but dread.” Lefford commented, looking pale and sickly in the candlelight.

“Arthur loved Rhaegar as a brother.” Barristan finally spoke up, something which he rarely bothered with unless it was an issue of guarding the royal family, finding that his input was rarely taken despite - or perhaps because of - his experiences as a Kingsguard. “If he made it to Braavos only to lose his brother and sister, Arthur would have taken it hard indeed.”

As Barristan had privately mourned the children - one he remembered as a bright, gentle boy and the other he’d never even met but imagined as a sweet mirror of Rhaella - all but broken to have outlived the last of the Targaryens.

“Oh, there is no danger to the realm, my lords.” Varys casually dismissed the very notion, even though he had an _itch_ in the back of his mind that said otherwise. Something about the entire series of events surrounding the two kingsguard and the Targaryen children wasn’t _quite_ right. He didn’t know why, or how, but something wasn’t what it seemed.

He would discover the truth in time.

He always did.

It was what he then _did_ with that information that was the question, one that is becoming ever-more vital as Robert attempted to drink and whore himself into an early grave.

“The company won’t even take contracts farther south than Pentos and rarely moves as far west as Braavos, preferring to stay on the routes between Lorath, Norvos, and Qohor.” He shook his head. “No, this is merely another instance of bitter men being unwilling to return home when their hopes were dashed, nothing more, nothing less.”

“I certainly hope so for your sake, Varys.” Jon rubbed one hand over his eyes, already exhausted and they hadn’t even started on the budget yet. “Or Robert might finally put your head on a spike.”

…

_First Moon 295 AC; Winterfell_

Ash hadn’t been certain what to think of events when his mother and uncle sat him down and informed him that the Butcher had decided he would be taken from Starfall to foster in his late father’s home of Winterfell.

The weeks that came and went between the message reaching his mother and his leavetaking had been a flurry of lessons and instructions and packing.

His family’s way to prepare him - in one way or another - for what was to come.

Ned hadn’t taken it well to say the least that his cousin was leaving and he couldn’t go with him, not even the promise that he could squire for Ash once he was knighted brightened his cousin’s pouting and sulking. A fact worsened when it occurred to the future lord of Starfall that Ash would be surrounded by a whole new set of cousins. Or that Ned would be leaving himself, due to some arrangement made by Ash’s mother he’s relatively certain, to serve as a page at Sunspear in the Prince’s court.

That at least was a tradition that they’d been expecting, given that Ash’s mother had been the chief lady-in-waiting to the tragic Princess Elia, their uncle Arthur had served on the Targaryen kingsguard, and Ned’s father was one of Prince Doran’s chief bannermen.

Mother had warned him of what _not_ to say and given him training on biting his tongue around the northerners. To not take any offense at their blunt gruffness. To hold his head high and not let Lady Catelyn attempt to cow or demean him over the circumstances of his birth.

_“You were born of passion, my dear one.”_ Mother had told him since he was in swaddling. _“Not of icy duty or forbearance. Remember that always: you are loved and_ wanted _as your parents loved and wanted each other.”_

It was a lesson he leaned on a great deal during those first cold months in Winterfell.

Catelyn Tully - another _little thing_ his mother had insisted on - came with a stern mouth, blue eyes as cold as the ice of the Wall, and an expression of disdain whenever she set eyes on her oldest good-nephew.

Her words, however, were always exactly proper, and while she wasn’t warm to him she never tried to harm him through either action or inaction on her part.

Though it had to be said that Lady Catelyn didn’t _need_ to say a word when her face spoke clearly enough and the prune-faced septa in charge of her daughters’ education had more than enough to say about Ash and his mother, legitimization aside.

The pair were the sole blight on Winterfell (well, aside from the _cold,_ Ash was a Dornishman and it took longer than he thought reasonable to acclimate) for the most part, even if his uncle’s Ironborn ward got on his nerves every now and again.

His uncle Ned was everything warm as his wife was cold, testing his knowledge and skills personally after he arrived before taking his education in hand. An education that didn’t differ in a single aspect than his cousin Robb’s. In fact, the only real complaint Ash had about his learning prospects in the north was the lack of Rhoynish culture and language, but that was to be expected and would have to be made up for once he came of age and returned to Starfall.

As the current plan for Ash’s future, charted and driven by his Dayne relatives and mother, had him either serving as his cousin Ned’s master-at-arms for Starfall - a prestigious position despite what some might think, as it put him in command of the second-largest military force in Dorne - or inheriting High Hermitage if his cousin Gerold failed to produce an heir.

Which the sullen arsehole gave absolutely zero sign of being willing to do, so was actually more likely than most north of the Boneway believed.

Neither were positions of equal rank as that of being the heir for a Lord Paramount, so Ash recognized that his uncle Ned was being rather liberal in allowing Ash to share _all_ of his cousin’s lessons and not just some of them.

And while northern swordwork favored strength over speed, training with new partners only ever helped increase his own skills.

No, he wasn’t certain _exactly_ what sort of punishment this was supposed to be that the Butcher handed down, but other than spending a good bit of his allowance from his uncle on sending messages in reply to his mother in Starfall and his cousin in Sunspear, and having to bundle in more furs than his cousins, he wasn’t really feeling the lash of it.

Robb was quick with a smile and had quickly fallen into wanting to learn from his older cousin, Sansa all that was sweet and courteous, Arya wild as any Dornish girl and good for both pranks and laughs, while Bran was a cherub.

Word had it that Lady Catelyn might even be expecting another little one, giving Ash another cousin to play with and spoil.

Life, far as it was from everything he’d ever known, was _good._

Now if only the septa would stop scowling at him every time he went to light candles to the warrior asking him to watch over his mother while he wasn’t there to send off her suitors, life at Winterfell would be almost perfect.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dragons and dramatics, basically

**Reincarnation Redux**

**Chapter Seven: Ser Arthur Dayne, Patron Saint of Long-Suffering Foster Fathers**

_Seventh Moon, 296 AC; Essos_

The heat from the dragon beneath her was scorching. More than hot enough that without at least a modicum of the heat resistance Targaryens were known for, a rider would never be able to keep their seat on dragonback. Even through the layers of her leather leggings and the simple “saddle” of multiple layers of toughened hide with wool sewn between them it would be impossible to tolerate for long by the average person.

But even at a mere ten-and-four years old, Daenerys Stormborn had _never_ been ordinary.

Then once she hatched her dragons...well, any attempts at pretending that she was what passed for normal by any margin other than that of a Targaryen dragonlord was laughable at best and futile at worst.

…

_End First Moon, 292 AC; Qohorik Wildelands, Essos_

“Are you sure about this, Princess?” Os asked, staring down at the petite form of the greatest hope of a Targaryen restoration alive.

With the recent incursion, what had already been short sleep shifts between himself and Arthur were curtailed even further, leading to near-unconsciousness and un-rousability similar to a post-battle fugue when they were able to sleep and rest.

One of which that Arthur was suffering at the moment, leading for it to be Os’s turn to handle their future queen’s latest round of _ideas._

Gods love him, but Arthur was far more capable in such things than Os, merely for the fact that of the two of them Arthur had far more experience from being Rhaegar’s best and closest friend for nearly all of the late-Prince’s life.

Os on the other hand, was a knight and killer to his toes, one far more comfortable with the darker edges their service under the white cloak had lended them to than any of his still-living sworn brothers.

Whether it was running into a burning building to save their horses, raiding a manse, or ordering the deaths of Westerosi nobility - though the latter was only a guess given her visit to the House of Black and White - Os didn’t think or had he ever thought it his place to question such things.

This latest idea however...this one even with other examples of the princess’s _madness_ being genius in another form had even him pausing.

Little did he know, it was with good reason.

Point of fact, Dany _wasn’t_ sure if her idea would work.

From her reading in her previous life, and including the canon-method, she knew a potential handful of different methods for what she was about to attempt.

And _other_ than the canon method, absolutely none of them were a certainty.

Nonetheless, she was determined to try the others first, if for no other reason than that the idea of practicing what to her mind wasn’t just blood magic but _death magic_ gave her pause while there were still other methods with far less disastrous side-effects, potentially at least, to try first.

She’d already set herself on the road for the most time-consuming method as soon as she arrived at the manse with setting the eggs in her chamber’s hearth and anointing them nightly with her blood.

Since then, she’d been waiting for a sign that they were soon to hatch.

A sign that had come the night she’d walked into the blazing stables and walked out with no hair and eyes that were far darker purple than when she’d walked in albeit of similar purity of tone.

Arthur had merely sighed upon walking in on the sight of Dany’s sleeping form surrounded by hot-to-touch dragon eggs that had singed - but not burned - her bedsheets as she’d started sleeping with them by night and kilning them (she really couldn’t think of a better way to put it) by day.

Now Arthur was asleep and she’d come to Os with the awaited (and partially dreaded) news: while she wasn’t _certain_ she did have a feeling that the trembles she’d felt from the eggs could mean only one thing: the dragon hatchlings were waking within their shells and were soon to break free.

And with them would come the true countdown of her - and their - return to Westeros for once and for all.

…

_Four Years Later; The Skies above Essos_

It took three years for even Ares, the dragon born from Dany’s blood, fire, and a fossilized egg who in another life was called Drogon, to grow large enough for Dany to mount him let alone the rest of his hatching-mates who to a one were smaller than him, if only by a fifth instead of a third than the next-largest of his “siblings.”

And Dany as a preteen wasn’t nearly the size of a full grown knight like Ser Arthur or Valen who both, thanks to their Valyrian heritage, had been chosen as riders in their own rights even if it took months longer for the mounts who chose them to manage their weight for more than a moment.

Valen’s sister Aly had been chosen as well, though like Dany was able to take to the skies far sooner than the men.

Unlike Dany however, who had a closer bond than she’d expected with all of the former-hatchings, Aly could only mount the gentlest of the dragons, the dark blue and silver Sweetsinger who liked to croon for her rider and Dany.

Sweetsinger was one of two nearly-identical-in-size dragons who were next in enormity after Ares, if slightly smaller (and it was slight enough of a difference that only a practiced eye would see it) than Hela with her purple coloring and white flecked scales.

Dany knew that despite their names pointing towards one gender or another, her dragons could very well change from male to female or never be one or the other at all.

She didn’t let it stop her when certain names just seemed to _fit,_ especially as not even Sweetsinger who chose someone other than Dany first of the hatchlings chose so quickly as to be named by their rider instead.

Which was why the smallest of the dragons in the gold-and-cream Freya was named what she was when Valen likely would have given her a Valyrian name rather than one of a goddess of love and war and magic from a world he didn’t even know of.

Arthur on the other hand had no complaints about the green-and-bronze’s appellation of Xerxes, while the remaining dragons in dark grey (Valyrian steel really with their black and blue ripples) Starfire and red-and-orange Mjolnir didn’t have a rider to complain if they thought their names _odd._

Which was fair, Dany thought, given that none of them had heard of a name like _mole-neer_ (to mimic Alys’s best attempt at copying Dany’s pronunciation of the infamous hammer of Thor) ever in their lives nor read of the same in all the dusty tomes their maesters tortured them with once-upon-a-childhood.

It was another thing chalked up to being “a Valyrian oddity” by her companions for Dany to sigh over, but since she used that same excuse to cover quite a few of her from-another-world issues, she didn’t bitch over it except in her head.

Riders or not, Dany didn’t - _couldn’t, would never -_ allow her friends or loyal guards to join her on her latest spurt of insanity.

They were going to be _furious_ to say the least when she returned, but...needs-must.

Seven dragons of ever-increasing size were nearly impossible to hide, despite the tucked-away bit of the world that they’d claimed for their own near the borders of Qohor and the ruins of Sarnor. Dothraki hordes passed too near as the dragons’ hunting grounds were forced to increase apace with their sizes. Os and Valen were constantly coming-and-going as they spread information, misinformation, collected the same, and ran a growing sellsword company.

A sellsword company that was swelling with the “disaffected” sons of “former” Targaryen loyalists from Westeros hand-in-hand with _actual_ sellswords that Os and Arthur vetted ruthlessly.

They were kept busy enough without adding a task that would _surely_ have them branding her mad if the other things she’s done over the years hasn’t accomplished that already.

She couldn’t blame them.

They didn’t know what she knew.

And in this case it was _definitely_ a case of _knew_ and not _guessed_ based on a series of stories she once read.

When she was Sif, Daenerys lived in a very specific type of geographical region named for a very _temperamental_ reason as “the Ring of Fire.”

A place with so many volcanoes that she knew more about volcanology and earthquakes as a child than most people ever had to learn in all their lives outside of a volcanic region. Knowledge that she’d shared without stinting whenever one of her writer friends had had a question. Or that she used in multiple debates regarding the Doom of Valyria.

It wasn’t enough for Dany to listen to sailors’ stories about her ancestral home, not with all the treasures it potentially held - tangible and otherwise - when she _knew_ that generally speaking most volcanoes didn’t constantly erupt.

The Doom was a disaster the likes of which the Known World had never seen, it was true.

But it was one that was just as likely formed from pure tectonic mechanics as it was a curse or magical means.

Moreover, there was an account of Balerion and his last rider returning from being missing with sores and damage that couldn’t be healed, the sort of ailments Dany would expect to see on someone who was subjected to the poisonous gases and extreme temperatures created by volcanic fallout.

By Dany’s reckoning, four hundred years was more than enough to risk another venture to Valyria, even if she didn’t know that in the books Euron Greyjoy had boasted of completing such a journey and had a few significant trophies to prove it.

Oh yeah, if _any_ of her friends, guards, or mother-hens had even the _slightest_ idea that Dany intended on testing the so-called curse regarding her ancestral lands, she’d be locked up in the manse faster than Arthur could say “Over my dead body, your _grace.”_

All in all, better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.

Especially since Arthur and Valen in particular had zero fear of her dragons while even Os treated them with wary respect, and the dragons in turn rather enjoyed the pair, making them far less cautious when it comes to curtailing her wilder escapades than the rest.

And she - and her dragons - loved the uppity fearless bastards for it.

…

_The Manse:_

_“That impossible, unbelievable, infuriating little baggage, I’m going to have her_ hide _this time.”_ Arthur swore up and down, skipping from language to language as he paced the manse’s study furiously, his letter from their - _missing, by all the gods,_ missing - queen crumpled in one hand as the others watched him.

From concerned sweet Missandei, Dany’s body servant, to stern Ser Gerold nearly the entire household was there as to a one Dany had been correct: freed slaves from Astapor had thus far made the fucking _loyalist_ companions and servants any of the Westerosi had ever seen, impressing even Cerys with their devotion to the young exhilic queen.

“She’s never led us wrong yet, brother.” Os eventually sighed, willing to take the initiative - and the burning glare - from Arthur to move forward beyond wailing over a situation that despite all their wishes (except maybe Mossador and Marselan’s but the eunuchs were impossible to read unless you were Dany and/or Missandei) they couldn’t do the first or slightest thing to change.

Daenerys had done what she had _always_ done: what she wished, which from experience was generally also what she _must_ in order to position them one step closer to retaking the Iron Throne from the Butcher.

In Os’s opinion (and Gerold’s though the stubborn old bastard would never admit it) that was really all that mattered regardless of whatever soft _feelings_ he might have regarding the petite princess or the toll it took on his heart at her more fearless and/or dangerous stunts.

But then, Os was a stolid Riverlands man, not a fiery Dornishman, so it was no surprise that he dealt with such things in a far different manner than his fiercest brother-at-arms.

Gods-help whatever whelp decided to try for Dany’s hand, as if the lass herself wasn’t enough to give a saint grey hair, there was also guardians at the gates that would given even a hero from the grandest stories pause - and he wasn’t talking about her dragons, what with Valen accepting a white cloak of his own after returning from his spying mission to Westeros as Dany’s Ser Valen the Valiant.

“She’s never flown to Valyria, either.” Was Cerys’s dry summation of the current state of affairs. “There’s genius hidden in madness and then there’s _true_ insanity. Valyria falls a bit too close to the latter for my liking.”

“She knew we would never approve,” Valen grumbled, arms crossed and scowling. “Why else would she take _all_ the dragons with her instead of only Ares and those still unbonded to their riders?”

“Because she dances where the bravest of knights, saints, and men fear to tread.” Arthur scrubbed his hands over his face in exasperation. _“Gleefully_ at that. Takes risks with her own life that she’d never ask of another in a thousand years.”

A fact of her personality that if Arthur and the others were lesser men, they would resent her for.

Thankfully for the genial relationship between the conspirators, they _weren’t_ lesser men even if they were very _tired_ men after following after a madcap princess with even madder ideas and plans for more than a dozen years.

All of them that had been with Daenerys from the beginning had pinned their hopes on her even when her brother was still among the living.

That they had to deal with the _reality_ of that choice now that it was coming into full fruit with the princess rapidly approaching her majority could be seen through one lens as their comeuppance for that bit of implied treason against Viserys.

_Could be,_ but in general wasn’t given the late-prince’s, er, _foibles_ when weighed against the good of the realm.

“Pardon me, good sirs, miladies, but I do not understand.” Missandei finally spoke up. “The princess, she is safe with her children, yes?”

“Yes,” Arthur admitted - grudgingly - but factually. “None of them, but Ares especially, would never let anything happen to their mother.”

“Then all is as it should be.” Missandei gave her counsel as her lady had taught her when to speak up and when to keep her own thoughts when her lady wasn’t present. Some, but particularly her lady’s Bull, weren’t nearly as comfortable with Missandei’s words as the princess. Which made her lady that much more of a miracle to Missandei’s mind, even if the princess hadn’t sent the Bull with orders to bring not just a body servant and guards but also their families if possible, managing to save her youngest uncut brother from the knife and entry into training as an Unsullied. “We must follow the princess’s plans and she will return in due time.”

The words were sour for the others, but correct from the twist to their faces but Missandei didn’t mind.

They could like it as little as they liked, so long as they, like Missandei and the rest of the former-slaves of Astapor, _obeyed the princess._

These Westerosi were proud, and had a pariality for complaints Missandei and the others couldn’t quite grasp but in the end they understood the same simple truth that slaves were born knowing:

_Valar morghoulis, valar dohaeris._

…

Dany stood on a cliff overlooking the Smoking Sea in the twilight between day and night.

Her dragons were arrayed around her, Ares at her back as always.

Her scaly children aligned themselves the same way at all times unless their riders were upon them, in an order that after some thinking upon it, Dany recognized as designed to protect those most vulnerable of their weyr: Sweetsinger who was so gentle, and Dany herself.

On Ares’s left and right were the most _solid_ of the fighters in Hela and Xerxes. Tucked between Xerxes and Starfire who took up the right flank with the longest reaching flame breath (but not the hottest, which was Ares) was Sweetsinger. The left flank in the meantime belonged to a backup guard for Dany and Sweetsinger in Mjolnir and the scout of the weyr at the left-tip of Freya who was matched well in Valen indeed despite her diminutive (compared to Ares at least) size. Fast and agile, none of the others could best Freya in speed and aerial acrobatics, whether she was carting around Valen’s extra poundage or not.

(Much to Mjolnir’s disgruntlement, as while the red dragon was fast, something about the shape of Freya’s wings kept him from matching her agility.)

Eyes searching carefully over the horizon, Dany slowly smiled.

Yes: there _was_ a red glow at various points that corresponded with the (estimated, what with the Doom and tectonic shifts, etc.) location of a couple of the infamous Fourteen Flames.

But there _weren’t_ the plumes into the air that spoke of eruptions that affected the _atmosphere_ and that had been what concerned her the most about her venture.

Ongoing lava flows were one thing, and if she knew where they were (such as by scouting them from the air) she could avoid them.

Poisoned air on the other hand would have been a massive deterrent given the lack of medical sciences in the known world.

She had enough of lung issues in her first life, _thank you very fucking much,_ she was going to pass on gaining more from her own stupidity in her second.

Well.

That she knew about anyway.

“This is going to be _fun.”_

And if her grin was a little mad, there was no one there to call her on it as Ares snuggled his snout under her arm with a huff for scritches.

…

_One Year Later; Mourning Spears Sellsword Camp, Norvos-Qohor Merchant Road_

“Commander! Commander!”

Ser Arthur Dayne and Ser Oswell Whent, both in camp that day - a rarity as they often switched off collecting and spreading information, but as Os had made _quite_ the discovery and the beginnings of a deal that would all-but-seal their reclamation plans (if they ever recovered their lost princess anyway, damn the girl) - looked up from studying the contract Os had ridden into camp with the previous night.

For a moment the messenger - a stripling squire from House Bar Emmon based on the sigil on his tunic - rushed into the command tent.

Over the years since the Princess Daenerys - Queen in all but her own stubborn mind - came up with the idea of hiding an invasion force to retake Westeros as a sellsword company, neither of them had had any _idea_ just how large the Mourning Spears would grow or even how many loyalists, nobility or common-folk, knights, hedge-knights, or rabble foot, remained.

They soon learned however, with ranks that seemed to swell with every moon that passed.

Though some of the loyalists who were more along the lines of _returning_ to the fold than remaining loyalists from across the Narrow Sea, in the end Os was pragmatic about the issue: swords were swords.

Their princess would need every last one of them before her bid for the Iron Throne was over, and he, unlike the stiffer-necked Gerold and Arthur, wasn’t going to turn away those that came more out of disgust for Baratheon’s excesses or the ever-growing Lannister hold on the royal court than out of love for a teenaged girl they’d never met.

Daenerys in the beginning had given them a list of people to approach first hand-in-hand with those they could never trust under _any_ circumstances but left the rest up to their discretion.

With her, ah, _sabbatical_ over the last year, it was a distraction that Arthur in particular had needed as the Sword of Morning set about working out his frustrations with their liege on her would-be army.

As long as he wasn’t drinking himself insensate, Os really couldn’t care less if the cocky Tarly second-son ended up with a few long-to-heal bruises, no matter how much Randyll bitched via raven over it.

His liege lord might be on Daenerys’s “don’t trust” list - or more to the point, the Lady Olenna was - but the Tarly lord was as good as gold when it came to his love of the Targaryens and especially the princess’s brother Rhaegar like many military men from the Rebellion who'd once flown the dragon banner.

“A rider, Commander!” The Bar Emmon boy blurted out, eyes twitching anxiously from one infamous knight of renown to the other. “A woman with blue hair on a Dothraki blood stallion with Unsullied guards!”

Now _that_ made them stand up straight in shock - and hope.

“How many guards?” Os demanded even as Arthur was already pelting from the tent, Os two steps behind him as the squire wheeled and tried to keep pace despite his much-shorter legs.

“Two, Commander!” He panted out. “In a knight’s scale armor!”

To his dying day, Godfric Bar Emmon would never know what it was about that message that made the Black Bat of Harrenhal so happy, but he never forgot the face-splitting grin and the wild whoop he gave as he darted forward and left the boy in the dust.

Or the sight, when Godfric finally caught up to the scene at the camp gates of Ser Arthur Dayne’s embrace of the newcomer, or that the Sword of Morning weeped actual _tears_ into her hair two words spilling from between his lips:

“You’re alive, you’re alive!”


	8. Chapter 8

**Reincarnation Redux**

**Chapter Eight: Blood from Tears**

_Sixth Moon, 298 AC; Small Council Chambers, Red Keep, King’s Landing, The Crownlands, Westeros_

“...and has our young Dayne problem returned to Starfall safely at last?” Jon Arryn, feeling twenty years older than the mere four that had passed since the _Dayne Problem_ had returned to the forefront of the King’s mind, asked wearily of Ser Barristan Selmy.

While it was a task far beneath the stature of such a renowned knight as the Bold, given the boy’s - man’s now he supposed - maternal family and his sire, Jon had always felt it better to be prudent in the matter of who to trust with escorting Ashara Dayne’s son both to and from Winterfell.

A good thing if the _suspect_ bandit attacks they had originally faced in travelling north and the no-doubt doubled amount they would have faced now that it was all-but-certain the young knight would inherit High Hermitage from his cousin.

Catelyn Tully was a vicious woman, but at least she was smarter about it than her younger sister, Jon’s own wife Lysa.

For all that the Tully sigil was a trout, their forebears might as well have chosen an Essosi elephant, so long did that family hold onto grudges - as evidenced by the never-healing rift between war hero Bryndyn “the Blackfish” Tully and his older brother Hoster, Jon’s good-father who nonetheless was two decades his junior.

Nevermind that Ashara Dayne was hardly the first woman Brandon Stark bedded while he was betrothed to Catelyn, or perhaps even the only one to have a bastard by him, Ashara was rumored to be the one he would have foresworn the betrothal for, and _that_ was a slight that the older Tully daughter found impossible to pardon or forget.

She minded her manners and courtesies according to everything Jon had heard on the matter while the boy was within her husband’s halls at Robert’s orders, but Jon still had his suspicions about those attacks in the Riverlands on the original journey.

Not that there was anything Jon could truly do with just _suspicion,_ but it allowed him to know which way the wind was blowing at least.

That the smallfolk had been quick to offer aid to the boy and Ser Barristan after the attacks, that they seemed almost _enchanted_ with the boy’s looks and even moreso with the tragic figure of his parents separated by King Aerys, those were things that a canny Hand of the King could _use_ to stave off the ever-growing resentment against Robert’s reign.

A coin here, a whisper there, and suddenly there was a new pair of starcrossed lovers that the minstrels were singing about.

And with much less chance of arousing the Queens ire than that of her _husband_ and Lyanna Stark.

Such small matters were hardly the sort of things one thought of when they thought of the trials of running a country, but unless Jon wanted another rebellion on his hands, it was the sort of small matter that he and Varys in particular kept a close watch on as more and more Lannister guardsmen flooded into the capital with every turn.

A city that had _never_ forgotten exactly _who_ had sacked it during the Rebellion or the blood that the red cloaks had spilled.

If there was a less-liked queen than Cersei Lannister to have lived in the Red Keep, Jon certainly couldn’t think of her off of the top of his head.

“We were feasted and welcomed most joyously by House Dayne, Lord Hand.” Barristan nodded firmly from his seat at the table.

“Excellent.” Jon sighed, his troubles easing at least a portion. “Better south of the Boneway than elsewhere.”

“He’s become something of a symbol of the Rebellion.” Varys explained silkily to the confused Lord Commander who had as a matter of keeping his sanity rarely paid attention to gossip or minstrel’s tales as they inevitably prodded at his unhealed wounds from the Rebellion. “Left fatherless by the Mad King, born of the dashing Wild Wolf and the brightest star of House Dayne, nephew of the brave and honorable Ned Stark,” Varys lifted his brows in expectation. “It’s quite the tale for the bards with little need of embellishment. That he’s a northman and a knight, with the beauty the Daynes are known for...well.”

Varys gave an elegant movement of his arms that was _almost_ a shrug.

_What could one do?_

Especially as Jon Arryn wasn’t the _only_ one who had seen the opportunity to nip at least a portion of unrest in the bud using the boy’s _tragic_ figure as a focal point.

Unfortunately in these days of fat drunken stags, ill-tempered drunken lionesses, and petulant vicious idiotic princes, dashing figures for smallfolk placating songs were in short supply.

One must make do with what they _did_ have to work with, and Asher Dayne wasn’t exactly a poor model for such work, even if he could have done with a dash more of his father’s infamous charm and a dash less of his uncle’s reticence.

But then no one was perfect, not even the gods as far as Varys was concerned.

“Speaking of symbols.” The young voice of their newest - and youngest - member piped up, that being of Lord Renly Baratheon, the King’s youngest brother, who had replaced his grandfather not even a year passed with Lord Estermont’s passing into the Stranger’s arms.

Thank the gods that the old lord had lasted _that_ long, as the idea of an even _more_ foolish fop of a lordling on the small council filled exactly none of the other members with joy.

But Renly _was_ the King’s favored brother, and above all the King must be obeyed.

Unless one had rebellion on the mind anyway, but that was another matter.

“What news of the former Kingsguards?” Renly asked, as he invariably did at _every_ council meeting.

Though it was also a question his elder brothers asked, but they at least had the grace to keep their obsessions with the boldest remnants of the faded Targaryen dynasty in private.

At least until Robert had a couple bottles of wine in him, anyway, then all bets were off.

“Still in Essos, Lord Renly.” Varys said patiently, keeping himself from rolling his eyes when the Master of Laws nearly _pouted_ at his habitual answer.

And it would _remain_ his habitual answer until he discerned just _what_ Arthur Dayne and Oswell Whent were playing at - mere rebellion with Dorne or perhaps something else.

With the songs that had reached his ears - almost a year later than they should have, and in nearly tatters at that - of a reunion between Dayne and a young woman who _might_ have been Tyroshi but also _might_ have been something else altogether, Varys knew he _had_ to discover that potential something _else._

What he would do once he did however, not even Varys could predict beyond one measure:

It would be for the good of the realm.

“Their sellsword company signed a contract with Qohor and Norvos in the latest squabble with Volantis over the Golden Fields.” Varys continued, as if bored.

“Ser Davos tells me that traders from Essos are speaking of their company having a _woman_ as one of their captains.” Stannis said in his humorless way. “That she’s Dayne’s daughter.”

That Arthur Dayne wasn’t known to _have_ a daughter went unsaid but hung thickly in the room, as not all had been convinced that the Princess Daenerys had died alongside her brother, for all that Robert refused to hear otherwise no matter how the idea was broached or by whom.

“It’s been sixteen years.” Pycelle wheezed out, quick as a viper to stamp out even a _hint_ that a Targaryen might yet live. Though Varys was sure Stannis’s words would swiftly fly to Tywin Lannister’s ears. “Certainly long enough for a disgraced knight of a failed dynasty to sire and raise a child. Better a daughter than a son that might take up his mantle.”

The others nodded, however reluctantly on the part of Stannis, as his own son-less state with a daughter for an heir was a sensitive issue with the humorless man.

Renly scoffed in agreement, waving an indolent hand as he helped himself to the wine in his chalice.

“Let the Sword of _Mourning_ ,” he sneered the play on words that had become so popular regarding Arthur Dayne. “Raise a barbarian shieldmaiden in the East. As long as they stay on their side of the Narrow Sea it isn’t worth the coin to hire a man capable of sorting the matter.”

That there _were_ few - or perhaps none at all - men capable of “sorting the matter” via an assassination that Renly’s words implied went without saying.

But it was a suggestion that hung thick in the air as they moved onto other topics, nonetheless.

_..._

_Tenth Moon, 298 AC; The Golden Fields, Volantene Territory (Disputed), Essos_

It never failed to interest her.

The things: the situations, the acts, the horrors and the blessings alike that a person could become accustomed to given enough incentive or exposure.

Likewise, though it wasn’t applicable at the moments, just how easy a body could _snap_ at seemingly the slightest misfortune or provocation.

All the battle scenes watched in a movie or written in a story in her first life could never have truly prepared her what it was like to be in the middle of one, let alone one that relied almost strictly on close-quarters combat with edged weapons rather than the much more remote, almost _detached,_ distance that came with firearms.

Dany may have been up close and personal with the raider whose belly she slit open, but at the time she didn’t have the time to pause and note the way his eyes glazed over or the stench as he shit himself as his brain lost control over his muscles in death.

By the time she returned from Valyria to the camp of the Mourning Spears with Mossador and Marselan in tow, the two newest members of her Dragonguard sworn in by Ser Gerold himself, Dany was _more_ than familiar with what a violent death at her hand looked like.

This world wasn’t kind to women to start with, add in being alone (despite having a weyr of dragons ready at any moment to burst out of their day-hiding and fly away with her and/or roast her enemies) in _Essos,_ and looking like Daenerys Targaryen looked, and as a result she’d had to put her constant lessons from her knights to swift use long before she met her former-Unsullied in Qohor.

It was only luck - maybe even an act of the gods whether those she’d followed in her first life or those of her new world was open for interpretation - that she’d managed to skirt a Dothraki horde.

An act which gained her a Dothraki mount and weapons but had her riding fast and hard before the scouts failure to return could be noted by the _khalasaar._

Hardly honorable combat to snipe him from a hill with her bow, but honor and survival rarely went hand-in-hand when one was hopelessly - almost hilariously - outmatched.

Dany was a good fighter, yes, and the treasures she’d found in Valyria made her armament formidable, but up against a Dothraki screamer with a long braid, she was firmly of the belief that it was better to be safe than sorry unless she fancied turning in her ambitions for life as a Dothraki bedslave.

She might have taken on Arthur’s infamous trait of dual-wielding swords but at heart she was significantly more Oswell’s creature in a fight as a brawler and dirty fighter who was as apt to go for the knife to the knee or groin as the clean swipe of a head from shoulders.

Or - and purely overkill but Arthur had a showman in him when it came to one-on-one fights - the Sword of Morning’s trademark head-lopping scissor maneuver with his swords.

None of her guards, friends, or guardians had been _thrilled_ with her decision to spend her fifteenth year serving at Arthur’s side learning to lead men in battle - the hard way.

The learning from the ground-up way.

Putting academics into practice and her swords (and knives, and bow, and…) where her will was and fighting alongside the Mourning Spears.

Not a one of whom had the slightest inkling of who she actually _was,_ everyone believing that she was who she was presented as: Arthur’s bastard daughter Rhae, named for his lost best-friend and prince, and as wild a half-Tyroshi and half-Dornish could ever hope to be. Even those who knew the true purpose behind the creation of the sellsword company were kept in the dark. And any to might have had _questions_ given her looks were quick to dismiss them from their minds: after all, what member of the Queensguard would _ever_ let a princess of the realm _fight?_

No, no, those few told themselves. The Princess Daenerys was kept pampered and coddled and cosseted in hiding. There was _no way_ that she was fighting in the mud and blood and shit of the latest squabble between the Free Cities alongside rough soldiers and rougher mercenaries.

A grin - that was more a baring of teeth as she cut an enemy’s arm off at the elbow before hacking at his neck when he grabbed for the stub with a bellow of furious agony - split her bloodied lips behind her concealing simple helm.

She could hardly _wait_ for when it was time to travel to Dorne at the vaunted highborn “captains” of the Mourning Spears learned just _who_ it was that they in turns jeered, scoffed, laughed, leered at, and propositions all these moons.

Dany was anticipating much babbling for forgiveness, blanching in panic, and maybe even some good old-fashioned _fainting._

It should be _glorious_ to witness and Os was taking bets on the outcome.

Arthur was just seething in restrained fury.

Well, when her guards weren’t kicking asses and teaching _lessons_ in the training pits anyway…

…

_First Moon of 300AC; Winterfell_

_“...and I have come for my birthright…”_

Dany felt her pulse thunder inside her chest, could feel it throb ferocious and strong at her throat in exhilaration.

Not triumph: not yet, not even _close._

But as a sweeping first move in the game of thrones when no one in Westeros beside a small number even knew she was on the _board_ still let alone playing, it was an unparalleled success even if it wasn’t without hiccups and challenges on the way.

Tears, agony, angst, danger, death: all had followed her steps since she was born into this world.

But it wasn’t without its joys, its blissful moments of happiness and peace.

In the quiet that screamed louder than any of the Butcher’s earlier bellows that followed after her little... _announcement,_

The silence didn’t last long, even with bared blades at various throats and hostages already squirrelled away by her men.

Not all of whom who had sworn to her cause had joined her or awaited her arrival in Winterfell.

Oh no no no.

Dany knew that the single greatest weapon she _had_ (other than a weyr of dragons, but those were more useful as threats unless she was pushed into mass destruction) on her side was surprise.

Surprise that even with all the effort and pains that had been put into place to keep her presence in Westeros for the last year hidden, would disappear on a raven’s wings if so much as a _whisper_ was heard in the wrong place by the wrong person.

_Some_ of the main challenges to her claim were now in her hands, it was true.

But not _all_ of them.

Indeed, Dany would even go so far as to say that the single deadliest of her enemies was absent.

Tywin Lannister.

The Great Lion wasn’t one to be underestimated and short of burning down Casterly Rock with him still inside it, one she was going to have to be both cunning and ruthless to counter.

Hence, her current situation: taking hostage Tywin’s children and grandchildren along with dozens of attendants and retainers to the royal court that were of varying degrees of Lannister relation.

It wasn’t enough to declaw the lion, but it _would_ give him cause to be patient and cautious.

And it would _absolutely_ be enough to keep Hoster Tully from trying any _clever_ attempts at blockading the North to keep Dany pinned above the Neck as she also held his eldest daughter, her husband, and their children.

Still, Dany had never been one to put all her eggs in one basket or to underestimate the stupidity of others.

Meeting furious - and confused, and betrayed - indigo eyes as she looked beyond the sight of having one of the single greatest threats to her life bound and at her feet, she felt a flash of regret before smothering it in its crib.

_Needs-must._

After all, laying siege to southron castles was all well and good and an _excellent_ way to keep the Butcher’s brothers, Tywin Lannister, Hoster Tully, and Jon Arryn’s loyal Valemen in check, but all of that would have been for _nothing_ if the North raised its arms and swept down on the south in a furious tide.

Historically, any and every war was decided by which way the North cast their lot.

Dany wasn’t her brother, or her father.

And over the dead bodies of _every last Stark_ if necessary would she have them once more take up arms against her family when it would like as not cost her not just a war, but everything she’d strove for (killed for, lied for, stolen for, etc.) since Viserys’s death.

...

**Author's Note:**

> The ages and birth year of characters are intentionally messed with for this fic. Mainly because I wanted to age up characters without screwing with the timeline too much. For this fic, we're going with a faster pace from the Tourney of Harrenhal to the end of Robert's Rebellion to make the children born at the end of the war older when they start to have a serious impact on the Game of Thrones.
> 
> As a result, Daenerys, Robb, Jon's iteration, and others are all older than in the books and more in line with their appearances in the show.
> 
> To be exact, Daenerys is two years older than in canon, making her approximately five years Viserys's junior instead of seven and eighteen in 300 AC which is when this version of the "main events" will take place which is two-to-three years pushed back from the events of the first A Song of Ice and Fire book.
> 
> Now do that math and be squicked out with me over how freaking young she was when Viserys sold her to Khal Drogo.


End file.
